Balanced [LWN.net]

Balanced

Posted Aug 6, 2026 15:07 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Balanced by mb
Parent article: Nelson: rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

Actually writing down things makes our brain think about it more than just reading it.

100% agreed. And also, I can't tell you how many times I've written code, and then started writing documentation for it (on various levels, from code descriptions meant for programmers all the way to user guides) and in the process of writing the documentation, realized that there were many improvements to be made to the code.

Balanced

Posted Aug 17, 2026 10:26 UTC (Mon) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link] (3 responses)

Writing down things makes our brain do nothing in particular. That has been a hypothesis of teachers everywhere for decades but I can literally copy some text and forgot the words before the sentence is even over.

Writing it only helps us understand it better if we at the very least understand and rephrase it completely.

Balanced

Posted Aug 17, 2026 12:36 UTC (Mon) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Agree here. I'm about as likely to remember something I've written down as not. Heck, sometimes I refer to the docs for some sections of code as a coppermind because it is, basically, a distillation of my investigations of the code and that I, myself, couldn't explain again without investigating again.

Balanced

Posted Aug 17, 2026 13:20 UTC (Mon) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (1 responses)

> Writing down things makes our brain do nothing in particular. That has been a hypothesis of teachers everywhere for decades but I can literally copy some text and forgot the words before the sentence is even over.

I think it definitely varies by person. If I read something I remember it. If you tell me verbally I'll forget it almost immediately. I've known people swearing that for them writing makes the difference and I have no reason to doubt them. It wouldn't surprise me if typing and writing by hand work completely differently here.

The trick is to know what works for you. In my case, if someone says something I need to remember I immediately write it down so I can read it. After that I can throw it away.

Different folks, different strokes.

Balanced

Posted Aug 18, 2026 6:49 UTC (Tue) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link]

I think in the teacher situation in particular what usually didn't help is that the teacher isn't transparent and so you are usually writing down what they said a few minutes ago after they moved to the next blackboard while also trying to follow what they are saying now which occupies the same part of your mind that the understanding of what you write would need.