Markers for hardware and software

Some of our students need to create visual markers in specific fields of knowledge. Hardware and software are very specific fields of knowledge that require specialized methodology of visualization for engineers and programmers. Below is a discussion attempting to deal with this issue.

Question:

I’m having troubles creating markers for technical materials such as hardware/software manuals and documentation.

To me, it seems complicated because there are a lot of “keywords” and “names” that have been created ore (re)used to explain a domain specific concept, and therefore it is difficult or misleading to associate those names with images that belong to other contexts; it is also difficult to think of sensorial or emotional connections.

Do you have any suggestion – or example/guide – on how to be effective in creating memory markers for this kind of situations?

 

Answer:

• Dr. Lev Gold 
  

   Speed-learning as we teach here do not apply as-is to some technical subjects. As a programmer I had to develop a different methoodology for my personal use.

  I will give a brief explanation of the methodology. The underlying issue is design patterns and block-diagrams. If you can remember fast design patterns and block diagrams, you can encode the data you read into the block-diagrams, and give the blocks names. You will also need to crossreference blocks with code segments, but this is the easy part. If successfully constructed, the block-diagram objects serve as markers, with code serving as subvocalized stream enabling double-encoding which is the basic part of superlearning…. The tricky part is implementation: to implement this method your technical skill should be at system architect level. So you WILL become a better programmer as you practice.

• Peter Nielsen 
  

  So, I cant use the basic course for say, learning python.. Its only for general articles ..

• Dr. Lev Gold

  You need to adapt the methodology for your specific needs. I do speed-read code, UML and other technical materials, but I use supplementary methods. For example, the markers may take form of design patterns. Chunking is also very useful. Speed-reading comments allows to focus on the main flow. Larger eye viewing angle allows to parse very efficiently tens of thousands of lines of code..

• Luca Lenardi 
  

  I’m sorry but I cannot figure out what you mean with “markers may take form of design patterns”. What does that refer to?

  Dr. Lev Gold

  When we become good programmers we are taught design patterns in various languages and algorithms: singleton, semaphores, bubble sort, state machines, interrupts handling and other similar stuff. If you  learnt different patterns it is OK because there are different sorts of programmers. As you progress professionally you learn that some sort of designs reappear time after time in various contexts. You meet them as old acquaintances, and you may as well give them names like “black swans” (rare events), “pink elephants” (systems that are too big and complex to actually work) and other names commonly used or of your own creation. You can create virtual safaris of various exotic animal including  some animals nobody like you call like that. In fact this is a form of loci method, where you put various pieces of code (animals) in various files (itineraries). You imagine the biosphere, and then you hunt 🙂

  Good hunting, and tell me more of your successes.