[jventura]

As a CS professor, I have to create lots of exercises for my students so I keep my brain occupied with these kind of things, trying to simplify my examples on each iteration. I find that it is very hard but very gratifying to simplify things. Also, much easier to explain to students.

Also, when I come across algorithms such as the Sieve of Erathostenes which was discussed recently here on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15408506), I do them to keep my skills and reasoning up to date..

Other times, I do some project euler problems, etc.. In even other times, if a blog post is interesting I try to implement the algorithms or examples there. For instance, there was quite recently a discussion about the little book of Operating Systems, and I've built the bootloader example and learned a little bit more about 2nd stage bootloaders and NASM Assembler.. Things like that..

I find that it is more efficient to learn lots of small things and join them with what you already know previously in your brain, than trying to learn bigger things..