Why your brain learns faster by doing than by studying, and the neuroscience that explains it
I spent months on Codewars. One to two pro...
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So true! Practical experience is something totally different!
It gives us confidence!
At first I used to fear for starting a new project but when I started to participate for online hackathons, it changed everything!
We were a team of 4 and built a whole app in 3-4 days!
Literally I myself was shocked to see a working app made by me!
It was always so hard for me to study algorithms cause they never connected to something concrete, actual work! So glad you were able to build a project and got some coding insight!
Such a great read, and so relatable. I’m the same way, I find it much harder to wrap my head around abstract concepts just for the sake of learning them. When I have a specific goal, it becomes much easier to see the benefits, and the dopamine hit you mentioned is spot on.
When a solution or a bug fix gets associated with some kind of emotion or accomplishment, or even things like a particular song, smell, or taste, it tends to stay in your brain almost forever. That’s why experiencing things is often way more effective than simply memorizing them.
That said, I’ve also had plenty of moments where I was already familiar with a theoretical concept, and when I ran into a problem, I had that “aha!” moment and realized that a particular design pattern, algorithm, or solution had been created for exactly that scenario. Those moments are amazing too, and they cement the concept even more deeply in your mind.
There’s so much more to this topic. It’s definitely one of my favorites.
codewars taught me leetcode syntax. production taught me what happens when you deploy at 5pm friday.
Throughout my entire web development career, since the early 2000s, I've spent zero minutes on learning platforms. All my experience to this day has been strictly through practical learning and self-involvement in work tasks. Two years ago, I was thrown into a solo project on NextJS, which I'd been ignoring until then. It took me a couple of weeks to refactor and update the project, complete the tasks, and all subsequent tasks, with varying success—but still! So the goal of your article is very relatable. Thank you and good luck!
The bit about needing the concrete thing first really lands. One thing I'd add from the other side is going back to algorithm drills after you've shipped real code feels like a different activity entirely. Suddenly they have somewhere to anchor, because you've got actual systems to map them onto. The practice wasn't useless, the order was just backwards for a lot of us it's build first, then understand the foundation, not the other way around.
This really resonates. But there's a privilege worth naming here, you had a job that provided the context. Not everyone gets that. A lot of engineers grind abstract exercises not because it's working, but because it's the only approximation of "real" they have access to. Lots of mid-level engineers are waiting for companies to give them a single chance.
That's actually why I'm building The Senior Leap. Scenario-based exercises around situations that have already gone wrong, where recalling a pattern isn't enough. For anyone who learns the way you described but doesn't have the job yet:
github.com/MohammadiSina/the-senio...
Codewars taught me how to reverse a string.
Production taught me why a missing null check can ruin everyone's afternoon. 😂
The point is (as you said) that the knowledge doesn't stick, you forget it as soon as you've memorized it, unlike "real world" projects ...