[throw6969away]

> But you can get that from sheer experience and from continuing to learn from a variety of sources. Books are also...

Learning is inherently painful. You are encoding boring new information into your brain, and most of it will be useless. From personal experience, 95% of the things you need to learn in CS or mathematics are boring. It is extremely difficult for most people to find motivation to do this. Schools (with grades, etc.) provide a structure to incentivize this.

[hutzlibu]

It hurts me to read this. Because actually learning is inherently fun, or used to be.

Why do kids have fun playing? Because they learn this way.

Playing is learning.

Or it used to, until the philosophy settled in, that playing is meant for wasting time (and you surely can waste time playing as most modern games are made for time killing) and learning has to be intentionally hard.

The most effective way to learn new things for me, is still to play around with them. Whether it is compilers or a new graphical framework. And then systematically move on and read documentation about it.

People can do this alone, but you are right that for most, including myself - a structured class can be very helpful. But it does not have to be a pain. The most I learned was in classes where the tutor understood how to teach in a fun and easy way.

[throw6969away]

> The most effective way to learn new things for me, is still to play around with them. Whether it is compilers or a new graphical framework.

Compilers and UI APIs are easy to learn. I did it too. Education is the problem of teaching people much harder things.

> It hurts me to read this

Hey man, look, I was a great student and graduated from a good college with a 4.0 GPA with a math and CS degree, and now I've made a lot of money in industry. I am a huge proponent of the U.S. educational system and of the freedom of the individual to become educated.

But there are hard things you have to do in life; unless your name is Erdős, who, btw, was on speed the whole time.

It was relatively easy for me, but learning something real is something that is hard for all humans. The subjective experience of encoding millennia of information into your fleshy brain. Just like working out. The best way to work out is with a coach or buddy. There's a reason humans evolved to be social. Same is true with educational structures.

Play-based learning is a fad designed to satisfy liberal white women. Real, practical results come from overcoming challenge.