REPLtition is the mother of leanrning

[ Category - Mindset ][ Category - Philosophy

The REPL is the fastest way to learn.

You give input, you immidiately get output.

The input-ouput loop is absolutely paramount to learning.
That, and repitition. And you can get more repititions with a tighter REPL.

If there is some process where the input to output wait time is high, it's going to be harder to learn. I guarantee baking would be learnt way faster if we somehow instant-baked the bread instead of putting it in the over and waiting.

Someimtes I think of this as the Machine Learning approach, where you're the machine. Just brute for sledgehammer-to-the-head type learning. Lose. lose. lose . .... win. Lose agian. My friend beat me in chess like this once. Just kept playing over and over, we played over a hundred times and eventually he beat me. Then again.

Then we were evenly matched. I was impressed. He didn't study any chess or anything. Just lost until he won. He learnt chess that day, but I learnt perseverence.

Now when you see a process: see if you can minimize the time-till-first-feedback. If you can, then you're closer to a REPL, and that's the optimal.