{"id":6431,"date":"2016-06-15T07:48:28","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T14:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=6431"},"modified":"2018-03-29T13:09:22","modified_gmt":"2018-03-29T20:09:22","slug":"why-learn-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/15\/why-learn-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Theory Should You Learn for Practical Skills?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve met a number of self-taught programmers. These are people who make their living programming every day, but never went to school to learn how to do it.<\/p>\n

A few of these people have expressed a mild regret for not learning more computer science. They know how to program well, but they don\u2019t have a good understanding of some of the deeper math and theory behind the programs they write.<\/p>\n

Which brings me to my question: Should these programmers learn more theory? Would they be better programmers if they did?<\/p>\n

Learning Bottom-Up or Top-Down<\/h2>\n

The way a lot of self-taught people learn skills is purely through usage. Programmers start trying to program from an early age, maybe to make games or websites. Everything they learn is motivated by trying to figure out how to do something they want to do. Let\u2019s call this style of learning bottom-up<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This differs a lot from the approach that happens in academic environments. In those settings, recognized experts decide what theoretical knowledge will be useful to students and push them to learn it, even if learning those things isn\u2019t obviously useful to the immediate practical ends of the student. Let\u2019s call this style of learning top-down<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bottom-up learners only pick up the theory they need to solve the problem in front of them. If you\u2019re learning another language through immersion, you\u2019ll pick up grammatical rules when you need to express yourself, understand another person or notice you\u2019re not saying it right. You don\u2019t learn the rules in advance and then wait for a situation to apply them.<\/p>\n

Is it Better to Learn Top-Down or Bottom-Up?<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve thought a lot about which approach is better for learning, bottom-up or top-down. In truth, I\u2019ve used both. The MIT Challenge<\/a> was clearly a top-down learning project, as I aimed to follow a particular curriculum rather than teach myself. The Year Without English<\/a>, on the other hand, was mostly bottom-up, using immersion to drive improvement.<\/p>\n

My feeling tends to be that in the short-term, bottom-up tends to do better. It\u2019s very hard for anyone (even an expert) to know exactly what concepts should be learned in what order. If you learn from trying to do things and pick up theory as-needed, you rarely learn anything that isn\u2019t useful. In contrast, much, perhaps most of the time, in school is learning things which aren\u2019t useful.<\/p>\n

The long-term picture is less clear, however. In the long-term, there\u2019s probably some advantages to a top-down approach, because often there are ideas which only appear useful after you\u2019ve learned them. A bottom-up approach misses these opportunities entirely.<\/p>\n

This suggests to me that, if your goal is to learn a skill you intend to use, then you should start closer to bottom-up and shift to top-down only later. What would this look like, in practice?<\/p>\n