The first level is to be exposed to some kind of summary. The second is to attempt to read and investigate the details. The third is to use a hands-on mechanism of engagement, which doesn't necessarily mean "write software" for software development, it means priming yourself to be involved, which could mean writing notes, creating art or attempting to teach what you just learned. All of those things create facets of understanding that aren't accessible in a passive context, and the more modes of that you access, the more likely it is that you have a good grasp on the knowledge.
My approach to developing has grown more consciously iterative as I've caught on to this. I copy things back and forth between paper and the screen manually, and I just spent an hour today designing some personal versioning/project organization(a micro-project for an audience of 1 - start by applying Syncthing's sync and versioning, then add a script that tracks and clones subdirectories in a CSV - add comments, auto-logging and tags to taste in the CSV format, edit that file manually for all fine adjustments, and you are good to go in under 100 lines).
I realized that I didn't need "version control" so much as "iteration control" - sometimes I have a branch that has ambiguous relationship to an existing repository because it's rewriting stuff or is a different kind of artifact from code. Writing a blogpost is very much that kind of thing since it refers to work you did do, but it isn't a code repository.
The first level is to be exposed to some kind of summary. The second is to attempt to read and investigate the details. The third is to use a hands-on mechanism of engagement, which doesn't necessarily mean "write software" for software development, it means priming yourself to be involved, which could mean writing notes, creating art or attempting to teach what you just learned. All of those things create facets of understanding that aren't accessible in a passive context, and the more modes of that you access, the more likely it is that you have a good grasp on the knowledge.
My approach to developing has grown more consciously iterative as I've caught on to this. I copy things back and forth between paper and the screen manually, and I just spent an hour today designing some personal versioning/project organization(a micro-project for an audience of 1 - start by applying Syncthing's sync and versioning, then add a script that tracks and clones subdirectories in a CSV - add comments, auto-logging and tags to taste in the CSV format, edit that file manually for all fine adjustments, and you are good to go in under 100 lines).
I realized that I didn't need "version control" so much as "iteration control" - sometimes I have a branch that has ambiguous relationship to an existing repository because it's rewriting stuff or is a different kind of artifact from code. Writing a blogpost is very much that kind of thing since it refers to work you did do, but it isn't a code repository.