Ultralearning Projects

Trying to learn things in a fast and efficient way.

[whostolemybrain]

Magic the Searching - Planning Phase

I tried planning the app out using concepts, so that I while programming don't need to also thing about the whole structure of my app.

The first step is a basic layout.

As you can see, it is somewhat chaotic but it conveys the general idea: after searching for a card the possible results are displayed in a scrollable list. Clicking on any list-item will bring you to a detail screen with possibly more information about the card and more advanced search options.

The next phase then adds more layers and interaction to the whole app.

So I plan on having a search history and also the option to save specific searches, in case the user intends to have a small collection of searches. Also navigation betweens these screens should be quick and easy. Another important feature I want to add is a right- and left-handed mode. Reaching buttons can be hard if they are fixed to one position. Therefore I want the user to be able to change the position based on which hand they are holding their phone with.

The last important thing is the Scryfall API query. Since I want to use that API as backend, I need to make sure that I have the correct handlers in place and correctly (and also in a fail-proof way) process the answers I get from that API. It will be my first time working with any API, so my guess is that this will be the most challenging part of the app.

Since I have not much experience with APIs I don't really have a good plan on how to handle responses, but I intend to formulate one once I have more information.

That's it for my plan, if you want to see how the app turns out feel free to follow. If you have any comments or ideas for improvements, please contact me. I am happy for any feedback I can get.

[whostolemybrain]

My First App - The Plan

So I want to program an app in only one week. Here's the plan for my first app.

For my first app, I want to program an app that I myself plan on using from time to time. I enjoy playing Magic the Gathering (MtG), a well-known trading card game. What I want to do is simple: I want users to be able to search for cards they (or a friend of theirs) have in their collection and want to see the price of the card.

Why is that important? In MtG the cards are only sold in random booster packs. Individual cards can only be obtained via secondary markets, specialized to provide those individual cards. So for any cards, both supply and demand dictate the price. This also means, that some cards can be significantly more valuable than another one.

Anyhow, I want the users of the app be able to fetch those prices from their phones quickly and easily. Luckily for me, I know that there is a website which collects these data from other websites and presents them on the web, even providing an API for their database. This will be the backend of my app, since I really don't want to program a whole database and/or web-crawlers and so forth for this app.

Another feature of the app should be both a text search (for the typers) and an image search (for the non-typers), so that you can easily search for the cards. The second feature should work well, since most of the time you will hold the MtG-card in one hand. This makes typing really hard and annoying.

So much for the plan of my first app. If you want to see how it turns out, or where I go next, feel free to follow me.

[whostolemybrain]

Ultralearning Flutter

I want to learn flutter fast and efficient, and become really good at it. For that I will use core ideas from Scott H. Young's Ultralearning and apply them to my own journey.

There are nine core concepts Ultralearning: Metalearning, focus, directness, drill, retrieval, feedback, retention, intuition, and experimentation. Each of these aspects, if applied correctly to your current work ethics, can be insanely impactful in learning.

For my flutter ultralearning project I took those factors and formulated exact steps to follow, in order to apply them to this type of programming. For me, personally, the most important factors are: directness, feedback, and drill. What does that mean?

1. Directness can be formulated into a tip every aspiring programmer has heard already: If you want to be a good programmer, you need to start building your own projects. Now why is this relevant? There is a plethora of reasons, but two really stick out. First of all, you actually do what you want to to, so you get better at the actual job. Thinking about running a marathon will never get you there - you need to actually go out and train. It is the same for everything you do. Second of all, applying information in any context requires deeper understanding of concepts, which in turn leads to better retention and higher levels of knowledge in general.

2. Feedback, in this ultralearning case, can be formulated into two different aspects. First of all, the apps produced and the code quality should be evaluated by yourself. Taking a close look at your own work enables you to see where you lack in ability or used ineffective methods. Then there is feedback from other people, which is much harder to get by. Few people actually take enough time to go through an unpublished app and tell the creator what they could have done better. Therefore the best way to get feedback is by getting the app ready to publish and then also publish it. While feedback may still be somewhat vague, since people do not know how you wrote this app, it will still point you in a general direction: What do you need to do to provide a better user experience?

3. Drill is somewhat related to the other points. It's all about attacking your weakest point over and over again, until you learned so much, that it is no longer a weakness of yours. By getting feedback you can see those weaknesses, and by being direct in your approach your faults become visible early on in your learning process.

I will try to apply these concepts to my learning projects, and monitor how they affect my results.

If you are interested in more updates on my progress, feel free to follow me.

[whostolemybrain]

I am trying to program apps in only 1 week.

After quitting my job recently, I thought about what I should do next. The answer was quite easy: I want to deepen my programming skills before getting a job fitting exactly what I want to do.

So I tried out many different things: web programming with Django and MERN stack, game programming with pygame (python), and some DevOps basics with docker and the like. Some things went better than others, but then I finally found what I was searching for.

With flutter I finally found a framework that I had fun working with. After going through some basic examples on the web, I decided that it was time to deepen my knowledge, before trying to write apps on my own. Said and done, one Udemy course later I am now ready to write my own apps.

Now comes the interesting part. I just recently read the book 'Ultralearning' by Scott H. Young. Therein he gives hints and tips, based on real stories and scientific finds, on how to learn difficult things fast. While there are many things to talk about, the first implication of this book for me is to write about my progress. The second implication is the following: I should try to go all in. And what better way to go all in, than to write an app in a single week.

If you are interested in my progress, I will post updates regularly and also evaluate on my own progress - trying to see where I did well and where I can improve.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me.