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Comment by Google234 | Hacker News Reader

- Read well-established repos and type the code, for example, I’m currently going through all of the React source and typing everything up as I read it

How is this useful at all? If you want to learn you should actually start contributing to a project and get feedback that way. You don’t learn how to do math problems by copying solutions.

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The point for me is that it makes my reading more active. I also get a physical feel for code style. If I was just reading source code, it would be a lot easier to skim over things without letting them cook in my brain from a bit.

I do this as well, I think the idea that code is physical is underrated. We've evolved to intuitively understand physical things; physicalizing something so abstract seems like a natural way to understand it.

I think there are two learning styles, one is to learn by doing, filling in the gaps as you go. The other is to front load information first and then apply it by doing.

For me, I learn the most by getting a broad overview of the material first, understanding how other people have used it, etc. then applying it myself.

For copying code, I actually do this to get a feel for a new language. An analogy might be to carefully watch Tiger Woods swing a golf club, then replicate the motion yourself to build muscle memory for the swing, then go out to the driving range and hit balls yourself.

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