A Philosophy of "Learning By Doing"

Coding and computer science provide us with the superpowers necessary to create extraordinary things. From designing cancer-identifying artificial intelligence to constructing the programs behind self-driving cars, there appears to be no limit to what these powers can offer. 

One such creation I had the opportunity to build was a web platform, named Collaborizm, that I developed during my senior year of college (as I was learning to code). Collaborizm lets makers, students and professors brainstorm around the development of new technical project ideas across departments and universities. Coffee delivery robots, apps that helped diabetes patients track their insulin injection schedules, and solar-powered cell phone chargers for Nepalese earthquake victims were just some of the imaginative ideas explored and created on the site.

(The Coffeebot, designed on Collaborizm, by maker John Rodrigues)

This experience developing my programming skills and applying this knowledge to build something as impactful as Collaborizm was an extraordinary period of my life. I learned the value of not only learning a new topic, but also how essential it is to immediately put into practice the knowledge you’re ingesting. 

To this day, whenever I study something new, whether it be a software library or a more efficient way to organize my code, I always try to build something I care about with the knowledge I’ve just learned. Learning by doing has become an essential tenet of my life.

Another Powerful Lesson

There was another powerful thing I learned while running Collaborizm: young people have a tendency to bypass the fundamentals when they attempt to master technical concepts. This observation left me thinking deeply about how to address this issue (even as I still was running Collaborizm), primarily, because it was getting in the way of students successfully building their dream project ideas. How could I better teach adolescents about engineering in an exciting way, but also do it in a form that made them appreciate (and remember) this process of learning concepts through doing?

An idea hit me one early morning, after I was forced to put Collaborizm on the side as it was not able to generate enough money to stay online. What if I combined two things I loved most in life, teaching and fantasy writing, to create a solution to the problem I observed? What if I used a fantasy novel to teach engineering and do it in a way which instilled a philosophy of learning by doing? 

Two Years Later

Two years later, I completed The Nestomir, a science-fantasy novel about a troubled adolescent named Jake Addison, who after taking a detour from school one day, ends up meeting an alien warrior named Dendro who has crash-landed in Jake’s hometown. Jake is forced to go on a whirlwind journey with this stoic warrior, who espouses the learning philosophy of his galaxy, The Nestomir, where learning coding is an essential part of day-to-day life.

..A few days after finishing the novel, thinking about my experiences running my first startup, I recognized that as an unknown author, a unique story would not be enough to capture the attention of readers. Applying knowledge and building things we believe will make the world better is just the first step in our journey. It requires incredible action to get our creations into the hands of those who need it. Then serendipity struck.

Serendipity and a Learning Center

Naveen Godiyal, a non-profit founder from the Himalayan region of North India, signed up for The Nestomir’s waitlist. Intrigued by Naveen’s educational background, I reached out to him, and not long after, we were on a zoom call, across continents, discussing how we could collaborate. 

On that call, the idea emerged to co-develop a learning center for the youth of Northern India: a learning center that would not only bring computer science education to a remote region of the world but would also showcase to educators worldwide the importance of using rich narratives (the learning center’s curriculum will be powered by the lessons inside The Nestomir) to complement teaching sophisticated technical topics. Six months later, after countless hours of hard work, we launched our crowdfunding campaign to build The Nestomir Learning Center.

This learning center experience is a great example of the learning by doing philosophy. When any of us reach out into the world, acting on the knowledge we’ve been given, we not only learn things faster, but we also end up meeting extraordinary people along the way. We hope this tale will play a small role in inspiring the next generation of learners to consistently think about both the material they’re learning as they think about the problems they wish to solve. 

So, computer science students across the globe, the next time you’re learning something new, make sure to ask yourself…what will this material help me create and what problems can I solve with it?

From the book (The Nestomir)

Excerpt summary: Zena, an elite alien warrior, teaches Jake about the power of making our code reusable with functions.

Zena began to walk left and right in front of him, in short paces, her hands held together behind her back. “The Function. El Funccion’ in Old Naronian. La Subroutina’ in Middle-Tarvezian. It’s a precious tool and many Ld’Shab spiritual teachers believe it to be the root of all programming…but what is a function? Well, from one angle, it’s a set of instructions. A set of steps. A set of steps that can be stored once, and then can be triggered again and again.”

Zena continued, “But why do we need this capability? The capability to fire off a set of instructions that only need to be defined once. And why is it so important?

“Well, to really understand the Function, we must first understand the Utma, also known as The Learning Force. The Utma believes in efficiency. It believes in efficiency because we cannot achieve our creative purpose unless we build things in an efficient manner. This holds true especially when working with computers. And at the heart of being efficient when we work with computers is the importance of making instructions reusable. Functions let us perform this critical task of making instructions reusable.”

 — Chapter 12, El Funccion’ & Accelera I, The Nestomir, Part I: Strange Landings