» Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware (Pragmatic Programmers)

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware (Pragmatic Programmers) Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: A Great Work on Learning How To Learn
Comment: It's my opinion that problem solving and the ability to rapidly learn new things are the two most important skills in our industry. Andy's book helps you boost your learning ability by walking you through some fundamental aspects of how one learns. He uses a lot of practical examples drawn from various studies on the psychology and background of learning, and does a great job of linking findings in domains such as nursing to our own IT domain.

It would be easy to dive so deeply into complex, dry topics like the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, brain modes, etc., but Andy does a great job of keeping an appropriate level of writing. He also fills the book with small, practical tips to help out - simple things like keeping a notepad or PDA around all the time to capture fleeting ideas in order to flesh them out later.

I also love how he highlights things that don't work, like his example of "sheep dip" training where technologists are lined up and thrown through an intensive multi-day training course which has little or no direct applicability to their environment. The training, like the parasite-killing goop sheep are dipped in, quickly wears off and has to be re-applied.

The book's tone is clear, enjoyable, and concise. The book's content is invaluable and mind-changing. I highly recommend you grab a copy and read it!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Pragmatic and Actionable Advice for being More Effective
Comment: A well written, entertaining, guide to tools and techniques to help you be a better engineer. While many of the examples are geared towards software developers, anyone who wants to learn how to use their time (and energy) more effectively will benefit from reading this book. This book is a great mix of background material to help you understand how you learn, resources to enable you to learn more, and techniques to help you practice right away. This book will be one I refer to often, and is a great companion to Getting Things Done, and Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Book, an Excellent Read
Comment: I am on my second read of Hunt's excellent "Pragmatic Thinking & Learning". This one of those books you keep close at hand, I will probably keep it right along side of my "active programming library".

I especially enjoyed the section on "Deliberate Learning". I personally tend to read books from beginning to end, and Hunt suggests more "active" engagement while reading, something I know I need to do, but Hunt actually solidifies what you should do.

That's not to say this is one of those "XX Steps To Being The Next Einstein" sort of books, it's a book of "suggested" guidelines & tips, and it's communicated in a engaging & personable manner.

I am actually going to use Hunt's suggestions I gleaned from Read #1 in Read #2 of this excellent book. Highly Recommended.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Thinking & Learning - Yes, Pragmatic - Maybe?
Comment: This book is an interesting read. It is not the common programmers book, I would say 95% of it will be clear to people out of the software industry.
There is some good abstraction about how our brain is built with some interesting observations. There are also some good insights about learning and expertise in general.

On the other hand this books gives little pragmatic advices. I cannot think of many practical things I now do better than before I read this book. Mmmm... Mind Maps are nice, but not a "big deal". Dreyfus model is insightful but not revolutionary.

I guess this book and its ideas are a bit premature. Maybe a second edition in 5 years from now, after a lot of feedback to Andy about these ideas, can be really pragmatic.

For now, I suggest to read this interesting and relatively unique book - but don't expect it to change your life.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Invaluable Guide for Thinking & Learning/Questionable Science
Comment: There is no question that anyone who purchases this book as a guide to thinking and learning in the professions will find several valuable techniques that are worth many times the price of the book. I am ecstatic to own this bag of tricks to learn faster and decide more accurately. My only minor nit as one who studies psychophysiology is that it claims to be based on the latest findings in cognitive neuroscience and academic psychology. It is rather the results of a master programmer and consultant's search for better techniques that he and others can use to learn more quickly and more efficiently exploit professional knowledge. In that this book succeeds in its purpose offering many valuable heuristics, some of which everyone will find valuable (such as using what is known about how expertise is acquired and applying that knowledge to forming one's own learning program), and some which only some readers will find suits their ways of thinking (like the emphasis on using a particular type of mind map to explore a problem). An example of where this books method's are personal and popular rather than science-based include the popular conception of left and right-brain thought processes. This book and many others attempt to connect their methods of thinking about problems with a variety of focused and holistic viewpoints with Roger Sperry's research on split-brained patients. Modern neuroscience and functional brain imaging techniques show that the way the brain engages with problem solving is a much more complex picture using a variety of whole brain and localized functions. For example see http://www.rense.com/general2/rb.htm and
linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1046202306003100. But like most readers I am mainly concerned with what valuable information and techniques I can learn to improve my personal and professional life. For that this book provides an extremely valuable collection of simple tricks and methods of learning and deciding. You will be glad you purchased it.

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