Columns of Air!

Daniel Snider's website

The best way to learn a tool

There’s this idea that’s been kicking around in my head.

One of the best ways for me to learn a complex tool that has a very high skill cap is to learn the smallest subset of the tool that can do the most amount of work then use it over and over until I’ve mastered just that bit. It should be that the small subset can let me actually fully perform the tasks of the tool but maybe not as masterfully or as easily as someone who is using all of the tool. The beauty is that

  • I’ll have loads of fun making real things (albeit imperfect)
  • I’ll quickly crave more power from the tool, but at the right moment

Examples for how I’ve used this idea:

Tool: Programming

  • Subset: Only GOTO, INPUT, PRINT, and IF in basic on a TI-99/4A.
  • I had fun making: Choose-your-own-adventure style games for at least an entire year.
  • Eventual power crave: All of programming to make graphics, real-time games, etc

Tool: Mandolin as a rhythm instrument

  • Subset: Picking a root note on the fret board and applying this finger pattern to make a major chord:
  • I had fun making: Simple chord progressions to play along with others
  • Eventual power crave: More notes for more positions, eventually learning different shapes

Tool: FreeCAD

  • Subset: Only sketches, extrusions, and pockets.
  • I had fun making: All sorts of practical 3D prints. Honestly those are quite versatile.
  • Eventual power crave: All the other techniques in 3D CAD.

Tool: Vim

  • Subset: Only what can be done with a mouse and arrow keys similar to any regular GUI text editor.
  • I had fun making: Documents where I could slip in some special vim commands.
  • Eventual power crave: All the vim commands. I even ended up doing vim golf for fun.

Vim was especially nice doing it this way because I bounced off of vim many times before trying to just use it like a regular modern text editor only sprinkling in commands slowly.

Tool: Western musical theory for composing

  • Subset: ???
  • I had fun making: Nothing; I have not cracked this nut yet
  • Eventual power crave: I have bounced of composing many times because it’s so hard.

Terminology

Is there a term for this? The “Tool power subset”? Surely this is a very well known phenomenon. Unfortunately, when I watch tutorials (even for things I’m relatively expert at) I just see people try to dump everything all at once. E.g. have you ever watched a Blender tutorial? They try to cover 100% of all tools at once. I say, start with a few tools to make fun things and master those.

Finally, is there some way for me to write music? I’ve bounced off music composition so many times over the years. Is there a “tool power subset” of western musical theory I can apply?