| How do you learn? | By reading, practicing and thinking. |
| Do you like boring books? | Sure, but I need some fun too. |
| Who doesn't love fun? | Emo's? |
| That one was retorical. | I see. |
| Technical books tend to be boring. | Have you ever read the For Dummies series? Dilbert is quite hilarious. |
| Granted, we have all seen our share of Dilbert. | He is such a character. |
| But do you remember anything else from the series? | Ah, something general about something. I'm not sure. |
| What did you learn from that? | The more fun it is to read something, the less it is you learn from it. |
| There might be something to that, but it doesn't hold. | Why not? |
| Check this out: (define learn (lambda (fun) (+ (* fun -1) 200))) | What's that shit? |
| It's the function `learn`. | That's some scary motherfucking shit. What does it do? |
| It takes an argument `fun` and calculates the value fun * -1 + 200 | Ah, I see it now. |
| What is `learn 20`? | 180. |
| What is `learn 200`? | 0. |
| What does learn do? | It takes a funny argument and calculates the IQ I have learned. |
| Err. Yeah, something like that. | But this proves my point? |
| Yeah, the more fun it is to read something. The less you learn from it, but you forgot something. | I did? |
| Yes, pal. Take a look at this: (define ability-to-grasp (lambda (fun) (+ (* fun 10) 2000))) | I know what this is! |
| What is it then? | It is a function! |
| It sure is! | Let's celebrate! |
| Settle down. | ... |
| Good, now what does `ability-to-grasp` do? | It takes a funny argument and calculates the ability-to-grasp value. |
| What is `ability-to-grasp 20`? | 2200. |
| And `ability-to-grasp 200`? | 4000. |
| Do you know what this means? | Yeah. A text that is fun to read is easier to understand. |
| Exactly. But also? | You can't learn from a text that's too funny. |
| That's right. So what do we need to do? | We should all try to memorize the papers on Oleg's site? |
| That's one way, but I was more thinking of finding a reasonable balance. | So we could have some fun and learn summit too? |
| Yeah, man. That's right. Could you pass that over please. | Oh sorry, I didn't know I still had it. |
| I'm pretty baked too. | I know, you have been inventing functions on the fly. |
| I was trying to make a point. | I'm sorry. Go ahead. |
| I have been reading the Little Schemer this week. | Isn't that the book formerly known as the little LISPer? |
| It sure is. | It has been around since '95, you know? |
| I'm aware of that. | You should be ashamed. Was this the first time you read it? |
| What? You mean you have read it? | Ha! It's next to my SICP, K&R and Dragon Book. |
| Your what now? | And the pupil turned out to be the master all along. |
| I'm confused. | You should read the Seasoned and Reasoned Schemer as well. The whole series is excellent. |
| I already ordered them. I have so much catching up to do. | The socratic method really helps to implement the ideas contained in the series. |
| That was what I was trying to say all along! | It is like the human brain is better equiped to deal with dialogue than it is to deal with ongoing paragraphs of dull looking text. |
| That makes sense. | It does. It's also light, but not too light. Humorous but not LOL!!one!hilarious. Which makes it easy to grasp. |
| It's true, because I just told you. | But, why aren't more books written like this? |
| I don't know. | Hm. |
15
Jul
Why aren't more books written like this?Jul
One Comment
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Written by: TC
2010-01-22 03:00:23