How often do we spend minutes, if not hours, swiping along our phone screens, perusing our Instagram or Twitter accounts? While it may be entertaining and distracting at the time, I think we can all agree that we could allocate that time to more productive endeavors. No matter if you are a coding novice or expert, I encourage you to explore investing that time into asking and answering StackOverflow questions.
What is StackOverflow?
If you’ve never heard of StackOverflow before, it’s an online community where coders can post and answer any question related to coding, computer engineering, and computer science. Questions can range from as straightforward as How do I implement binary search in Python? to as advanced as How does a convolutional neural network work? It’s a mental exercise to not only understand what someone is asking, but think through possible solutions. Here’s an example of a question I answered a couple of days ago:
What’s actually so great about answering these questions a daily habit is that through the Feynman Technique we as teachers learn by explaining in very simple terms.
The Feynman Technique
When answering questions, I often rely on the Feynman Technique to not only provide a clear and concise response, but also enhance my own learning. The Feynman Technique essentially involves pretending to teach a concept to a 6th grader. Through this process, you identify gaps in your own knowledge. By “explaining” that concept and filling in those knowledge gaps, you expand your existing knowledge base and enhance learning. While answering questions, whether they be technical or conceptual, I try to employ this technique. For example, a prior question was related to convolutions, and the number of images produced by a convolutional layer. Here is my response:
As you can see I try to explain it in simple terms, giving examples and answering potential questions. At one point while I was answering this question, I was a bit confused myself. I went to online forums and watched a couple of YouTube videos and read an article on Medium I enhanced my own learning and was able to answer the question.
Making a Habit
There’s a saying that it often takes 28 days to make a habit. I’m currently almost at my goal of achieving this goal when it comes to StackOverflow. To be completely honest, I don’t answer questions every day, but I do check the feed and see what the most current questions are on a daily basis. I would compare this process to solving a daily crossword or Sudoku puzzle. If you were to solve a puzzle everyday, you would probably exercise your mental muscles daily. The same applies to StackOverflow.