Making Badass Developers - Kathy Sierra (Serious Pony) keynote

For a free sample of Kathy's book, visit: goo.gl/AU7A6j
From Fluent 2015. "Every moment of every day there’s a new language, framework, format, protocol to learn. Nobody has a more dynamic skill set than a web developer. We’ll look at the one metaskill to rule them all: The ability to come up to speed and stay there, over and over again.
Abouyt Kathy Sierra (SeriousPony):
Kathy Sierra worked as a game programmer, interaction designer, and learning specialist (Sun Microsystems, UCLA Extension) before creating the best-selling Head First series for O’Reilly. She was the original creator of one of the largest software developer communities, javaranch.com."

[@TarmoToikkanen]

Kathy Sierra has had excellent opinions on usability and UX. Also here, on developer experience. Key take-away message: When learning something new, expose your brain to hundreds of high-quality samples of [whatever you're trying to learn] in a short period of time, and the brain will learn to automatically recognize patterns. The skill will become automatic.

[@oreilly]

For a free sample of Kathy Sierra's book 'Badass: making Users Awesome', click here: goo.gl/AU7A6j For other keynotes and interviews from the conference, visit our Fluent 2015 playlist! goo.gl/OD6xbU

[@CrashPreinsertion]

Kathy Sierra is amazing!! I've revisited this lecture multiple times and there's always something great to glean from it.

[@MarcelMilcent]

Awesome! This should be a TED talk about learning in any cognitive-consuming work environment, not just programming!

[@aldosilva6]

The way Kathy Sierra explains things is unbelievable. I learned a lot with you, thanks.

[@jeremiahadamson7656]

I love this woman! She's the reason I learned Java as fast as I did.. I get to read the dry pages of a lot of programming books now, but I am eternally grateful to her for helping me build a good foundation

[@prithviraj1080]

Can you tell me more about your experience? It sounds very interesting.

[@jeremiahadamson7656]

Sure. If you have read any of the headfirst books, you'd know that it takes a rather unconventional approach to teaching and learning. I love programming, but for a long time I couldn't get past a lot of books that would just delve into pages full of code. I know I read and re-read the chapter on Objects at least 5 times and still didn't get the concept. Then Kathy and the headfirst series came along. I was actually having fun learning. She would use real life situations, or even go off 'dialogue style' and make up conversations (I really really loved those!). Being a writer of fiction when I am not programming, I came to learn java as I would read any novel, only with a deeper level of attention to the material. Soon, I finished headfirst java, and then I moved on to headfirst sql, finished that too... And with the basics firmly in my grasps, I started reading the dull dry books without problems. I am a big fan of Kathy, and I recommend her methods and strategies to anyone coming into programming newly or finding it hard to get past the initial struggle of becoming a programmer.

[@javierbds]

Yep, she showed that you get much better results when you engage your audience than when you try to impress them, even with deeply technical subjects. There is this idea among some people that because you have to deal with a lot of details that you would enjoy a book of minutia: this is what a lot of sw books were until Head First came around (lots of minutia).

[@fideloruko4160]

hi jeremiah can you give us an example eg how did you learn java did you like make an app before knowing the basics or what cant understand thanks

[@Skiamakhos]

Same! Also, when I ran into a bug in one of the programs in Head First Java, I emailed her & she had a look & saw that the new (then) version of Java that I was using introduced a bug, and she gave me the fixed code. What a lovely, nice person. I was devastated when she got bullied off the Net.

[@julianthe411]

This helped me more then any lesson I've ever learned in school. Thank you very much this was amazing .

[@Dan-tf9kb]

I like this idea of building a programming library with hundreds of high quality examples of small techniques, methods and idioms to help the community learn faster. Who wants to open source this with me?

[@oprah7]

You should definitely start that!

[@mokshasingla1837]

+Dan Allison I'd love to :).... Where should we start?

[@Dan-tf9kb]

+Javier Rovegno Campos Oh wow that's pretty close, I'm impressed...

[@SharatS]

Stack Overflow Documentation is something like this ...and it's in beta now.

[@christianschmitt5628]

doesn't that already exists? it's called npm.

[@stephenchurch5690]

Love your work, your books, your ideas. Thank you so much for sharing!

[@adamdeane4675]

this is, literally, the best video on KZbin.

[@neilpearce]

I'm so pleased she said "Practice makes permanent"….I've been saying that for years and all I get back is…"No it's not, it's practice makes perfect!". Here's how to think of this concept…..imagine you walk up and down a strip of grass. What eventually happens to that grass? It wears away into a pathway…right. So what happens when you 'stop' walking up and down that path? The grass grows back and that muddy pathway is now hidden and eventually forgotten about. That's exactly how the neural pathways work within our brains. Keep the pathway's open by practicing everyday - simple as ;-)

[@frozen_tortus]

Driving is a prime example that practices doesn't make perfect.

[@maatthieu]

I thought it was a clickbait title, but not at all, it's exactly what this conference do and even more, because life is about learning, so it's make my whole life greater :) Thanks !

[@shawnbrando6145]

11:25 . I lost my cognitive resources trying to remember what’s in A, B and C

[@user-fz8ni1ox4l]

C

[@satyajitsethy657]

I too love her when i heared her name itself - Kathy Sierra. She also knows for Java as moderator. I love evrything about her. Her works , thought process and dedication. Love u Kathy and all good wishes for your works. God bless you.

[@yulianaprytula5293]

One of the best talks about cognitive resources I have ever seen. Very nice. Thanks.

[@Ton369]

It's a 23 minute talk. But basically comes down to this: "Break up big problems into little problems. And get really good at solving them." Profound.

[@wabdih]

Yep. Still worth hearing the stories and studies though. Very interesting. She's an interesting speaker too

[@EndSub]

For me the message was a lot more about being aware of how you use your daily finite brain resource. I guess the next step is to find out how to use brain efficiently, which you describe above.

[@aa33366]

Probably not. Gist according to me is if someone wants to learn a skill say programming, then follow a two step approach: 1. Get high quality small examples 2. Get high quantity of such high quality small examples (200-300). Secondly, Divide a task to smaller task that can be done in 45-90 minutes, 3 sessions. Say, you want to get a document complete. Step 1: Session I (45 minutes) Outline Step 2: Session II (45 minutes) Content Step 3: Session III (45 minutes) Formatting If your document is not complete by 3 sessions, time to break down the sub tasks into smaller tasks Outline -Table of contents -Timeline description -Tables contents Content -.. -.. -.. etc. Then rerun the algorithm of 45-90 minutes, 3 sessions on subtasks Step 1: Session I (45 minutes) -Table of contents Step 2: Session II (45 minutes) -Timeline description Step 3: Session III (45 minutes) -Tables contents

[@crystaldragon103]

This was an excellent talk not only for those in the coding world but for everyday people as well (that would be me). It applies to so many things and the way we learn. Truly a lovely talk. Thank you!

[@mygoodiescoza]

Excellent - really enjoyed that! Something to really talk about and take back to your local dev community\ company and use to ingrain this sense of "smart" learning. Feels like she hit the nail on the head in terms of the vastness of skills the average developer needs to have and also relating that to the three piles - thoroughly interesting!

[@fwyae]

Man this girl is my inspiration to life!! So awesome. I totally get this, it has a lot to do with just making lots of iterations with any kind of experience to let your brain subconsciously memorize patterns. Its really cool to think about this, even if you are new in something, even if you make mistakes doing it, its still about time you spend doing it over and over! In some cases, patterns form from other patterns you know while not being aware of it. I totally experience this in all situations in my life. I think this is how experience is formed. And to think about it if you do that a lot, your brains start to get even better at learning/memorizing this way!

[@WallaceBMcClure]

Wow, great to listen to. I personally had been creating training with simple examples. I got yelled out, talked down to for simple examples that didn’t build on each other. I’d do things like “here is a uinavigationcontroller. Here are some properties and methods (that are mostly boring), why do you is it, and then move to code examples with either one to two examples.” This made the most sense to me. It is how I learned things the best. I always hated lessons that built on the last lesson. I argued these points with editors at book publishers and they didn’t like my thoughts. People argued with me about my ideas were bad. I tried to explain that technical books aren’t novels. People want to go in, get some info, and then go use it. People can’t jump to a section of chapter 8 in a book if they have to first read chapters 1-7.

[@igorshubovych]

She is awesome. Great talk! Thank you for sharing.

[@OmyTrenav]

One of the best talks I've seen about cognitive skills.

[@mukhtarjalwa5128]

This is amazing, thanks Kathy Sierra

[@shashankmarri1056]

What a master piece this video is!!!. Amazing video for everybody. I really like your books and I give most of the credit to you for the kind of Java Programmer I'm today. Your SCJP book has changed my life and the way I understood Java. I consider that book as my bible and still refer to some concepts when I want to implement something really mind blowing.

[@FilmonGEMZ]

Wow! Earned my Subscribe. This is amazing Kathy! Thank you so much for sharing this with us!

[@ehhhhhhhhhh]

For anyone out there watching this video and also learning python, check out Raymond Hettinger's talks. In particular, "The Mental Game of Python", since his focus is on this exact concept--you can program in ways that try to accomodate for your brain's limited number of registers.

[@emylievyrling534]

What a great piece!

[@josephfernando4867]

Wow...what an engaging personality and a top notch speaker to boot...

[@sibonelongobese8639]

This talk is great. Thanks

[@JohnWatson-Designcodez]

Wow she either an alien who trying to help a messed up human society or just a Badass Human trying to help fellow-beings, either way she's genius. Hats Off to your effort

[@DD3874]

Great video!

[@raffimolero64]

We really just found out that machine learning techniques apply to actual brains What a world

[@victormartins-software3912]

Wow, Really enjoyed this presentation, thank you :)

[@chezzy62]

Fantastic speech.

[@mrrolandlawrence]

wow what a great talk! saved to fave list.

[@christianmosley5573]

7 years later.. do we have any resources available that she describes? High quality and quantity set of code samples.

[@seymores]

Still relevant and excellent today.

[@paulorugal]

Amazing talk!

[@shawon072]

Seriously Kathy! How could you read my mind? You(Kathy Sierra) are not a programmer, actually you are a psychologist. You can read minds and learn form people's mind. That presentation is talking to me. Believe me you guys, she(Kathy Sierra) is a magician.

[@iphoneusdsd]

Very interesting, good viewpoints.

[@mphomathabathe8558]

wow, phenomenal!

[@deeproy7292]

thank you

[@p4tich]

Were is the link to working as a community on making huge-quantity samples happen?

[@lenaggar]

this talk is actually really really good .. well said.

[@OOpSjm]

awesome ...so true

[@whiskey4609]

kinda how i learned redux, there were so many moving parts so i decided to pick one subsection like action creators and reducers since they are connected. got good at that to the point it was muscle memory it was basic javascript. then moved on to learn other subsections and that worked for me

[@nkodmus]

You guys enjoy your day!

[@luisochoa554]

What a talk👏 Loved it

[@Abhi-tv1ml]

i just wanna know what camera was used here?

[@AdamSchelenbergCom]

Like it at the end.

[@jesussinacento]

Thank you

[@PauloAndreAzevedoQuirino]

I wish my teachers would see this video.

[@Cromfeld]

That is amazing.

[@rabbitcreative]

"Perceptual learning" => "non-verbal learning". See: general-semantics. I'm happy to see Kathy at-it-again, after CPU went dark, so many years ago.

[@alexandros-markovits]

Thats a great video!

[@hrishikeshwaikar251]

Whoa ! That was some intellegent talk by the great Cathy Sierra

[@codelucky]

Coding on TextEdit since 30 years? quite intelligent she is huh!

[@CarlyRejoicing]

?? your superiority complex smells bad.

[@DarrenSemotiuk]

I have no idea how my pattern-matching machine in my skull knew that I absolutely HAD TO watch this particular video. But it did, and I definitely did. So... now what...

[@alessandrob.g.4524]

Can somebody point me to studies that show what she is referring to?

[@tamilwargod]

could have used some code to illustrate how cognitive skill could help to find shortest and quickest solution.

[@user-ft6om1ub1j]

Can anyone correct me if i understood the talk in right way? Basically Kathy says that you need to make habbit from one activity and that you will have much better result because you don't need to waste your cognitive resources on thinking while doing it. But her example with pilots was misunderstanding for me. Thanks.

[@priyamsaikia5614]

Very interesting.

[@zdargahi]

wonderful

[@shishishishishishi1486]

Serious pony

[@That1Swiftgirl]

This is brilliant - thank you Kathy. I think understanding cognitive resources must hold the key to better understanding, diagnosis and management of ADD. Also, flip that idea around, it can probably help explain why so many techs and people who spend a LOT of time on internet exhibit ADD-like symptoms.

[@AndresLeonRangel]

what does she mean "are there any unicorns here?" in 00:14? Thanks for your answers!

[@tsantini13]

excellent

[@michelbernardo6883]

Do you have podcast ?

[@imimran924]

thanks

[@GiveMeAnOKUsername]

Best video on KZbin.

[@albertpatterson8164]

I like this.

[@fazlyrabby]

what is the meaning of unicorn

[@LightProgramming]

Sounds like the perfect pitch for HASKELL. The point of the language is to make reasoning about your code easier.

[@toy23machine]

Brilliant

[@floozyspeak]

this was a bad ass talk!!!

[@wendydherin1070]

Super interesting. Machine learning ... for the brain.

[@iskandar.bakshi]

i got aha moment that not related to this topic but thank you)

[@thesurlydev]

I miss O'Reilly conferences :(

[@alex.kostenko]

Cognitive resource and willpower share the same resource tank which something I did not know about but understand intuitively because brain had a lot of samples to learn from))

[@varunsingh9432]

what available when it needs to learn about programing , it's​ always a difficult to find out a well-prepared example or a smooth method which may leads us to learn easily and fast.

[@jasson15]

Does she mean that we build an excellent code libraries and reading them can make us become a master? I am not quite sure I realize what she tried to express in this part. :( Is there anyone could correct me or provide more concrete examples, especially for programmers? Thanks!

[@barboshaa]

I love she uses kanban to manage learning new skills

[@codelucky]

I usually apply Kanban rules over scrum methodologies, what do you gotta say about it?

[@marcusj5375]

yess

[@lucasterable]

Communting is the biggest cause of cognitive resource waste. Multi tasking is the second one.

[@Aerosmithism]

The question here is there a way to increase ones cognitive resource? Can one has a bigger tank?

[@AyushMandowara_xx7]

Vim as a Skill will always be at "B", but you can move subparts to "C" from time to time :) Once it becomes automatic, you become a Unicorn!

[@gottigame7033]

wow you hit it on the nail will. i do the same exact thing lol

[@richikchakraborty178]

Cool

[@gilbertsenyonjo963]

Now I know why I used to buy cake alot

[@moistbrownypoints]

Promises solve nested callbacks. It is called compostability!

[@hesham14yahia]

I had nervous breakdown, while watching, my life is miserable, because of all this things, I always Keep feeling inside me, which makes my very exhausted.

[@reynanagapito25]

2021

[@arabiccompprograming5161]

EVERY SKILL IN LEARNT : WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS EVERYTHING HAS TO BE DEVELOPED, BEFORE WE CAN WRITE REASONABLY WELL WE HAVE TO LEARN TO WRITE, tne same applies to reading, folding clothes, as for exceling at a particular skill, we have different degrees of competency, one can type a letter, another person can build a 5 page website, another person can develop a full-fledged computer game, another person can contribute to building a programmable-application system. Lets us be realistic, as for me, I can create websites, can develop sections of a website, can create quiz games, but if you ask me whether I can do more complex programming tasks, beyond what I can currently problem solve, depending upon its complexing in scripting code. I do what I can handle and cope with, why because I want to envisage reaching a finished project.

[@wmylkc]

Hi, I'm an English and programming learner, could anyone please tell me what does Unicorn mean here? Obviously, it can't be the real unicorn, the one looks like a horse but carries a dangerous weapon. Thanks in advance.

[@malikolivierboussejra9544]

Unicorns do not exist. So you cannot find them. Some are looking for someone with the perfect skill set, however such person is mythical and does not actually exist. Hence the term "looking for unicorns". Think about looking for a secretary who speaks Estonian, Greek, Cantonese and Swahili. What are your odds of finding such a person? Such a person would be called a "unicorn".

[@wmylkc]

Thanks for the explanation, I got it. Based on the answer I'm sure you are a human, thanks again Malik. :)

[@labib8aug]

unicorns are curly braces in programming lol

[@PresCalvinCoolidge]

Very interesting talk but I wish there were more examples of perceptual learning related to programming. Does anyone know of any websites or books using this approach? It is not surprising to learn that perceptual learning works for identifying the sex of a baby chicks since it is based on a direct visual analysis (i.e. perception). On the other hand, it is surprising that we can learn subjects that are largely conceptual (i.e. abstract), like object oriented programming, by the same means. Upon reflection, I do believe we learn best by example and this is probably what Kathy Sierra is getting at. Actually, this fits well with Ayn Rand's idea of "concept formation" where each concept we hold is built upon a perceptual foundation. In this case, the 'perceptual learning' approach for teaching a novice 'for loops' would be to have them practice writing lots and lots of for loops. After writing hundreds of examples, the student would have the necessary perceptual foundation to form the concept 'for loop'.

[@Parker8752]

+Calvin Coolidge The simplest concepts are largely based on patterns as well - and the brain does pattern matching really well. More complex concepts are based on simpler concepts, which are eventually boiled down to just patterns, which our brains handle for us (given the chance). To use your example of loops, over the course of an hour, I'd probably teach the while loop first, and then have the learners spend a few minutes doing some really simple loops before then introducing nested loops. After about 10 minutes on the while loop, they'd then start the for loop. Same again, and after around 10 minutes of that, I'd move on to mixing the two loops for a further 10 minutes. At the half hour mark, I'd move onto do while loops, do those for 10 minutes, and then spend the final 20 minutes doing examples of all three kinds of loops. After they were done with each exercise, they'd be shown the model answer and be moved onto the next exercise. By the end of that hour, they'd probably be sick of loops, but they'd be able to do them in their sleep.

[@Dan-tf9kb]

+Calvin Coolidge Let's make one...

[@codelucky]

Sometimes you just write the code which actually works and you do it without knowing or implementing the algorithm. It's the brain that matches the pattern. When you have a clear vision about your goal, your brain works hard to to find numerous ways to reach your destination.

what's wrong with node? nested callbacks :D anyway I think Stackoverflow already does that - but 1st learn basics at codeacademy, codeschool and maybe read some book so you know what to ask or search for

[@computerscientist5216]

[@threeone6012]

She's right.

[@jonathanting8339]

Sounds like non-parametric (kNN) machine learning with your brain

[@rjsr03]

I had a similar thought; I'm not that knowledgeable in machine learning, but the part when she talked about learning by getting exposure to a lot of examples and figuring out the patterns, sounded like the concept of training a supervised learning model (neural networks, specifically, came to my mind) :).

[@HonorOneAbove]

Limited Will Power; so learn by just throwing shit at the wall! I love it, goes with the CICD pipeline and fast failure. That's been my path all along, exposure / deep dive / trial by fire. etc

[@Myrslokstok]

Love people with experiance!

[@quarfv]

experience is even better.