I can only go by my experiences in college, and the times in my professional life when I've been among several people all learning the same new thing.
Invariably, I'm somewhere in the middle, and to be blunt: I blame bad docs. I'm a visual/kinesthetic learner. To really internalize something, I need to see it (at least in my mind) as some kind of visual relationship diagram, and I need to work with it a little bit. So my usual learning flow is:
Read the docs. (Alas, usually just piled paragraphs barfed onto an HTML doc somewhere.)
Sketch out the "boxes & arrows" diagrams as I read.
Build something to make sure my diagrams are right, and to cement in my mind how the thing works.
So I tend to be about 15% slower than team members/classmates who can just sit and read the code/docs and fully digest the information from that.
But I also find that while I'm not as fast, I often spot things (because my learning process involves hands-on work) that get missed by others. (Sometimes the docs don't match reality...) So if you hand the class new docs on Monday, then on Tuesday it'll look like I'm behind, but on Wednesday I'll be caught up, and Thursday I'm with the other "fast learners" at the head of the class.
I honestly think that better overview information, and with component/data flow relationships presented visually, would help everyone, as it provides a much-needed cross-check that guards against ambiguous wording or misunderstanding in the docs.
But I've also learned to fake being a really fast learner. :)
I've worked for enough really demanding employers that I can grab something new, learn enough to get going, and pick up what I need as I move forward. The end results work solidly, have good test coverage, and I'm fully ready to refactor/rebuild as new features get added, so they're "technical debt" in the classic sense: I intentionally trade quality/elegance for faster delivery, everything has solid test coverage, and I have a plan to repay that debt if/when appropriate.
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I can only go by my experiences in college, and the times in my professional life when I've been among several people all learning the same new thing.
Invariably, I'm somewhere in the middle, and to be blunt: I blame bad docs. I'm a visual/kinesthetic learner. To really internalize something, I need to see it (at least in my mind) as some kind of visual relationship diagram, and I need to work with it a little bit. So my usual learning flow is:
So I tend to be about 15% slower than team members/classmates who can just sit and read the code/docs and fully digest the information from that.
But I also find that while I'm not as fast, I often spot things (because my learning process involves hands-on work) that get missed by others. (Sometimes the docs don't match reality...) So if you hand the class new docs on Monday, then on Tuesday it'll look like I'm behind, but on Wednesday I'll be caught up, and Thursday I'm with the other "fast learners" at the head of the class.
I honestly think that better overview information, and with component/data flow relationships presented visually, would help everyone, as it provides a much-needed cross-check that guards against ambiguous wording or misunderstanding in the docs.
But I've also learned to fake being a really fast learner. :)
I've worked for enough really demanding employers that I can grab something new, learn enough to get going, and pick up what I need as I move forward. The end results work solidly, have good test coverage, and I'm fully ready to refactor/rebuild as new features get added, so they're "technical debt" in the classic sense: I intentionally trade quality/elegance for faster delivery, everything has solid test coverage, and I have a plan to repay that debt if/when appropriate.