I learn best when things are presented to me in chronological order. Like if you explain computer chip architecture to me by starting in 1950, I will understand it better than if you show me a modern-day chip with labels on the parts. Is that a learning style, or just me being a history nerd? - ThreadSky

annaleen.bsky.social • 423 days ago

I learn best when things are presented to me in chronological order. Like if you explain computer chip architecture to me by starting in 1950, I will understand it better than if you show me a modern-day chip with labels on the parts. Is that a learning style, or just me being a history nerd?

Comments

katzish.bsky.social•423 days ago

Chronology is very intuitive to the human brain, as I remind writers all the time

annaleen.bsky.social•423 days ago

... and yet all too often, stories present the facts out of order! (I don't mean in fiction, where that can be done for aesthetic effect.)

katzish.bsky.social•423 days ago

Right. I always say, “Chronology is your friend,” but that’s not the only kind of character

annehawley.bsky.social•423 days ago

OMG me too! Keep me pinned in that timeline, always let me know how much time has passed since the previous scene. Even in a nonlinear story, find ways to make it clear. (Sorry to butt in on a convo not specifically about editing but I couldn't help myself.)

roundtrip.bsky.social•423 days ago

I learned to program in chronological order:

from hex machine code and simple assembler (on a simulator);

to real S/360 assembler, then design using macros, design building on macro libraries, design of macro libraries;

Finally FORTRAN, APL, PL/I, PL/S, Bliss, LISP, exotic languages

roundtrip.bsky.social•423 days ago

Learning this way did a good job demystifying how layers worked as I started working top down over layers I had to learn and trust rather than construct .

It was Andy van Dam’s original two semester, two course per semester (Theory and Programming) boot camp sequence, with a 40+ hour/week workload.

roundtrip.bsky.social•423 days ago

At NRL in the 1970’s I used this approach to give one day QuickStarts for Navy Captains with no computer background, rotating into computer related assignment.

Start programming a machine language simulator and walk up through the scaffolding of OS, compiled languages, and sytems architecture.

peterme.com•423 days ago

Among my favorite books is COMING OF AGE IN THE MILKY WAY by Timothy Ferris, a history of physics and astrophysics. And I found that taking it in as history allowed me to better understand the science.

killerswan.bsky.social•423 days ago

FWIW back in college computer engineering classes that was basically how they taught us all

the new stuff takes what physicists call advanced physics to really understand, so lets start with a simple model we can have you students fabricate

killerswan.bsky.social•423 days ago

IMHO that might have been be a failure of the industry to produce adequate models and abstractions to make newer stuff fit in people’s heads, too, and I gather (second- or third-hand) that ARM got big by starting to do that

nonbinary.computer•423 days ago

Another issue is that basically everything remotely recent is NDAed to hell in one way or another. So you can know the broad strokes, but you cannot legally get into the nitty gritty of a lot of modern silicon.

And stuff like out of order execution, etc, just kinda needs certain base knowledge.

annaleen.bsky.social•423 days ago

I love that approach -- it also helps people understand what stuff has already been tried and discarded or tweaked, which is very important.

dlseltzer.bsky.social•423 days ago

What grasp of physics I gained in college was via astronomy courses (planetary and solar) taught as a history of physics in relation to astronomy. I did best with Newtonian mechanics--which, as my dad pointed out, really is a pretty decent basis for ordinary life on earth.

robpennoyer.bsky.social•423 days ago

I think about this a lot in the context of teaching computers to kids App>GUI>OS>hardware, with a hundred other layers in between, all easier (for me) to understand because I grew up as they were developed, my first computer a CLI. But show a kid an iPad, and its layers are completely opaque.

anthonybecker.bsky.social•423 days ago

I fantasize constantly about a system of study organized around the most important historical scientific and technical achievements, boiled down to some laboratory experiments starting with what Newton did and up to simulations of the LHC

so I don’t think you’re weird

notjustdna.bsky.social•423 days ago

When I was a PhD student I noticed many of the senior (molecular biology) scientists described not so much "it’s like this", but "why things are the way they are" - how the history of investigations into the topic led to the current point. I think knowing how things came to be matters, and helps.

blatherscribe.bsky.social•423 days ago

Is there another way to learn? I mean, Connections was great but I don't think I learned anything from it because it wasn't chronological. Everything builds on what came before, so I need to understand the early steps first. I can't think of anything I've learned newest stuff first.

anildash.com•423 days ago

I think it’s coincident with being a systems thinker?

annaleen.bsky.social•423 days ago

That definitely fits

braak.bsky.social•423 days ago

Is it chronological order, or like simplicity - complexity order? Because if it's the latter I'd say it was not only a learning style but also the regular learning style, most people are not served by learning something at its most immediately complex iteration.

annaleen.bsky.social•423 days ago

Definitely chronological. For example, I learned about philosophy by starting with early philosophers, which was definitely not the simplest place to begin.

tcarmody.bsky.social•423 days ago

Often chronology overlaps with other organizational principles too, like simpler to more complex

annaleen.bsky.social•423 days ago

In some ways. Though l would argue that humanities stuff was just as complex in earlier eras as it is now.

tcarmody.bsky.social•423 days ago

Let’s put it this way: chronology actually gets MORE interesting when you uncouple it from narratives of causation or development

annaleen.bsky.social•423 days ago

YES ... well put

tcarmody.bsky.social•423 days ago

True! As soon as I posted I started thinking about all the ways oral culture is just as/more complex than written culture

elfprince13.mumak.app•423 days ago

There’s definitely something useful about seeing how the sausage was made, so to speak, in a lot of areas of knowledge.

tekweenie.bsky.social•423 days ago

Now the transistor was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the silicon, and the spirit of bell labs was hovering over the vacuum tubes….

annaleen.bsky.social•423 days ago

lol I'm pretty sure that's exactly how it unfolded

tekweenie.bsky.social•423 days ago

It all started when then discovered the zero in math. 😄

gluejar.com•423 days ago

Semantology recapitulates phylogeny?

lanovellaserena.bsky.social•423 days ago

Linear learner?

susanschorn.bsky.social•423 days ago

Narrative structure is one of the strongest organizing patterns the human brain has and, while not all narrative is chronological, that's the most common form.

jenebbeler.bsky.social•423 days ago

Interestingly, letter collections only started to be organized chronologically on the 18th c. Before that, they were almost exclusively topical or by addressee.

susanschorn.bsky.social•423 days ago

That is fascinating! Are we talking about collections of letters to or from a single person? Or some other type of collection?

jenebbeler.bsky.social•423 days ago

All sorts. Petrarch is the only exception. But even when an author published their own letters, they didn’t do it in chronological order (though there was often a strand of chronology). Most Latin letters survived as dossiers in a topic or to a specific person. 18th c editors decided to order them.

susanschorn.bsky.social•423 days ago

I'm now realizing that I don't even know whether Paul's epistles are chronologically presented!

jenebbeler.bsky.social•423 days ago

Nope. The idea of a letter collection as a kind of autobiography is essentially an 18th c invention. It’s been suggested that epistolary novels were the impetus for ordering real letter collections chronologically (insofar as the texts allow it).

bananashirt.bsky.social•423 days ago

i also get tripped up by this. i'm like "why?" and get stuck.

robot.foundation•423 days ago

Modern electronics nomenclature and design is incomprehensible outside the historical context of its industrial legacy. Most computer architecture textbooks are heavy on history.

brucierosch.bsky.social•423 days ago

Me too. I want the whole ride

annaleen.bsky.social•423 days ago

take me back to the beginning, tell me how it all got started, and my brain is wide open for the next bit

brucierosch.bsky.social•423 days ago

And somehow I can **feel** it more

tristanelwell.bsky.social•423 days ago

I think the historical approach is one of the best ways of teaching/learning anything. It's much easier to grasp an idea when you know where it comes from.

sysfin.bsky.social•423 days ago

Some complications feel impossible to understand without historical context.

tomfinley.com•423 days ago

I need reverse-chrono first, then chrono.

Side note: I’ve been known to and kinda enjoy consuming serial shows completely asynchronously. Somehow I can mentally stitch the story together and it doesn’t hinder my understanding or enjoyment.

Ready for a FoAT prequel. Or sequel. Or both 🤞😬

clancyny.bsky.social•423 days ago

same :)

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