Why Writing Helps You Learn
Tags: career, writing, learning
Published: 2021-10-02 15:56:47

---
title: Why Writing Helps You Learn
published: true
date: 2021-09-17 13:40:01 UTC
tags: career, writing, learning
canonical_url: https://www.victorgarciar.com/why-writing-helps-you-learn
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/17o39s9z5hq3uz3tt4wa.jpg
---

Many of you may have tried to start technical writing and left it after a week.

Maybe someone has created a blog but stopped posting after a year or so.

You could have thought: "Why would I spent time writing for free if I don't like it so much. I should see another YT tutorial about this random topic"

Maybe you have wondered: "Would I be the one that replies in StackOverflow one day?"

Some of you may feel identified by these sentences. I will try to explain to you my main motivation to start writing:

> ### Writing makes me learn better!

* * *

## Traditional learning methods SUCKS!

As someone that comes from college here in Spain, I had to learn tons of things in a small amount of time. When the tests came, I could find myself with 8 exams in 4 days. This is Telecommunications Engineering we are talking about. Not an easy thing.

What would I do? What I have been educated for: Try to learn how to do some exercises from previous years. Memorize the parts that are always asked the same way.

![tony-tran-F8sCVSW4t4E-unsplash (1).jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1631884055242/v5Tc1M-O6.jpeg)

> It worked for 4 years!

When I arrived at my Machine Learning master's, I had to change. The math was the most complex I have seen in my life. Thanks to an awesome set of teachers, I STARTED to focus on understanding things in depth. The knowledge I have acquired during that year is one of the most durable I can account for.

### Here is when everything started to make sense.

* * *

## Overcome the "Tutorial Syndrome"

We are born in the Youtube era. We have seen an incredible amount of videos for many topics to find a solution. A lot of content creators, almost infinite knowledge at hand ... But let me ask you a question:

> How much of this content did you remember after 3 days?

I will love to have some feedback in the comments. For me, almost nothing. Don't get me wrong. I love YT and it has brought amazing content to our lives for free.

But watching videos, reading books, posts ... IT'S ALL PASSIVE!

It requires a lot less attention than coding, for example. In my experience, I could think of a couple of concepts extracted from books. I was amazed by the information. It released all the dopamine it could.

Most of the time, every highlight in a book is forgotten. Lines of CODE and TEXT, created with BLOOD and SWEAT, usually aren't.

![sweating.gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/l4FATJpd4LWgeruTK/giphy.gif)

## Increase understanding of topics

> If you could name a topic that writing didn't help you to understand better, I am a living lie.

Here I will use an example of my own experience. I was reading "Head First Design Patterns". Recommendable by the way. In this book, one or more [Design Patterns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_pattern) are introduced and explained in each chapter. I was reading it almost every day, but after a week I thought: "Okay, I did not remember any pattern. I don't know how to apply them"

So I decided: "Let's code them in a different language". Book examples were in Java, so for me, the obvious pick was Python.

> IT TOOK ME 3 DAYS to make the [Abstract Factory](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/design_pattern/abstract_factory_pattern.htm) work! 😅

Don't have any doubt about this: I freaking know how to implement the abstract factory after that. And also learn how to model a pizza franchise business 😆

What I want you to see with this is: Learning things that perdure in your memory takes time! Probably, the complex things that you can do without checking a guide are built on multiple failed attempts and StackOverflow questions.

I will show you a graphic about the retention of information based on the channel it is acquired after 2 weeks.

![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1631883593839/VqCrGL8T5.png)

* * *

## Learning one thing at a time

As software developers, we live in an industry that is constantly evolving. We are required to manage a lot of tools. This urges us to learn a lot of different things. For so much time we lose focus.

I love to learn new things. I love that sensation of reading a paragraph and say: "My god, this is great to know". Does Victor remember next month? Of course not.

I recommend everyone, including myself (the one that needs it the most): One thing at a time. Let's spend a week learning a small concept, let say: DTOs in Java. If we learn them for a week, write an article about it. You could visit it if you have any doubts!

If you plan to learn something more complex, divide it and make it easier. A cloud certification for example. Let's say we plan to make it in 2 months.

- Divide it into concepts by the guides of the provider and learn a service per week or so.
- Read articles 
- Make labs
- Write about the labs
- Repeat

When you make the sample tests, I am sure you will understand everything.

> PD: Skin in the game. I will try to do this for my next cloud certs.

## Summary

Writing improves learning. This is **FEKTS**. The main points explain to defend this have been:

- Traditional methods for learning with memorization do not work

- Complex concepts need deep understanding to be used


- Writing requires explaining. Explaining requires understanding


- Passive learning (Reading, Watching) vs Active learning (Coding, Writing)


- Try to code the tutorial in a different programming language. Or model the same problem differently for the same one


- An article can be revisited. A thought can't


- Learning one thing at a time

* * *

I am HONOURED if you have reached this point. Thanks a lot for reading 💙

Hopefully, I was able to illustrate how technical writing is important for learning as developers.

Reach out on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/VictorGarciaDev) to find more valuable content or just chatting!

🐦 @victorgarciadev

😼 https://github.com/victorgrubio

## References:

- [People remember 10%, 20%…Oh Really?](https://www.worklearning.com/2006/05/01/people_remember/)

Thanks and Keep It Up! 🦾🦾