Episode: 2389
Title: HPR2389: Thoughts on Lifetime Learning
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2389/hpr2389.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 02:08:40

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This is HPR episode 2,389 entitled Thoughts on Lifetime Learning.
It is posted by me and is about 9 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is in this episode, I talk about my experiences in learning to be a good learner.
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Hello hacker public radio fans, this is BeeEasy once again.
Coming in doing something a little bit different this time.
I want to talk to a subject that is very important to me and that is Lifetime Learning.
I'm not an expert on it, I'm just giving my experience.
So I feel like I've learned from a lot of important people in my life who are older
that the more they learn throughout their life, the more their cognitive ability is in their
old age. I know that there are studies that back that up, I'm not going to present those right now
because I'm lazy and I don't feel like it. But I did want to talk about some of the things
that I've learned in my pursuit of Lifetime Learning. I've never claimed to know a lot about a lot of
things but I know enough about the things that I try to learn about to get me started.
That's kind of the biggest thing that I've learned over time and that I've been taught.
I believe it has its roots in East Asian philosophy but that is if you understand the basics
of any topic and you understand the essence behind it and the driving forces behind it
and you practice those and you get good at those then you can often punch above your weight in that
topic and when I say punch above your weight I mean to the outside it will look like you know a lot
more than you do because you understand the basics and the essence of that topic very well.
I'll give an example. I have a martial arts instructor who talks about this is an idea and
it's also been in the way of the samurai, that book and a whole bunch of other places
this philosophy and I've seen it in many of his students when they go and they go out and do
national and international tournaments some of the people who have very little experience
can even though they're doing very basic activities and basic movements they outperform people who
have been doing that a lot longer who might know a lot more moves but they can't execute any of those
moves as well as his students who really just understand the basics and understand the history
and the essence of what those movements are supposed to be so they might only have four movements
but they execute them very well what way better than the people who have you know 25 movements
that they know how to perform. The same is true in technology in my opinion
I am by no means a software engineer I call myself a software get it done because I don't
I haven't really been formally trained on anything well very little formal training I won't say
none but I end up making things work and I'm making when I have code reviews from external people
they talk about how well it's written and how it looks like you know a very experienced person wrote
it but that's not me but what I do what I lack in knowledge about how to write a lot of different
types of code is that I learned how to use you know good code styling practices for whatever
language that I'm writing in I learn how to use if I'm doing object-oriented programming I use
good practices in that in that setting or good functional programming practices and you know I
understand I take the time to learn those things instead of trying to learn everything about
the language and learn how to do everything I understand I try to learn you know like for instance
for Python I learned how to do things in a Pythonic way if I'm doing C which I won't say never
but almost never do I look at good examples of what people call good C code and I follow that
example or C sharp or whatever the case may be and the same thing goes with with activities and
sports and you know whatever you choose to do if you understand the basics and understand
the essence behind it and practice that it will bring you very far one other example is I don't
know how many people in the hacker public radio audience are dancers but I have done a couple
different styles of dance and I am by no means once again an expert in any of this stuff
but if that's the one thing that dancers teach a lot is you know you don't need to know all the dance
moves but if you know the basics and you can perform them really well then when you go out and dance
you will impress people not because of your knowledge of a whole bunch of different things but
because you do the things that you do know how to do well and so that's one other thing that
what I was talking about and it's the last my last point is in the pursuit of lifetime learning
you should be getting better at learning so the the practice of learning you should be getting
better out as you get older I see how for instance my dad learns and you know he's been around a lot
low into me and he learns things a lot quicker and a lot of situations at least the basics and
the understanding of what it is all about because of this philosophy and he also doesn't get
frustrated by looking at other people who are at a ability that's above his and worrying about
what they're doing it's something I grew up with as a saying worry about yourself so instead of
looking around and saying well this person that is also in this class that I'm learning
is way better than me and getting yourself down about it you know don't worry about them
focusing yourself in your own learning and making improvements to yourself and that's the the
goal in my opinion of life is to always be improving and being better than you were the day before
whether that be more ethical than the day before a harder worker a better parent a better spouse
no no one's perfect and you should not be frustrated by your imperfection but you should
understand it and you should think about if you can do something to make yourself better and by all
means you know none of us are perfect in that endeavor I can tell you from first-hand experience
that I'll get it right all the time and I slip back and do things or you know I'm not always
pursuing getting better all the time but but when I do I feel like my life is more fulfilled when
I know that you know I talk when my kids something better and they are responding to me better than
the day before that makes me feel good and when I learn a new activity and I did it today better
than I did yesterday or ran one a mile faster than I did the week before that is a really great
feeling and it's something that I would try to reproduce all this time anyway sorry if this is
a little heavy and a little out there and not a little technical but it's something that was on my
mind and it was something that I thought you know it would be great to get other people's opinion on
and we're a little low in the queue so here's my little contribution for this time of year
so with that I'll conclude but thanks again and I invite everyone who listens to Hacker Public
Radio to contribute it's really easy and there's lots of episodes in the Hacker Public Radio
archive about how to do it and there's also some good resources on the website so please
contribute respond to any of the cast that either I've made or any of the other contributors have
already made and you know more great content will continue thanks and you've been listening to
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