[da5e]

Meat of the article: "Repeated fresh attacks are how hard problems are solved in the real world. ... Until you’ve approached a problem fresh, 3 – 4 times, you haven’t really yet tried to solve it."

[btilly]

There is more meat. Such as that you can't focus for extended periods of time. It is important to schedule time to work, preferably in the morning. It is useful to have a study partner around your level, but generally not useful to have a large study group. Get started early.

Those are all important points.

[ericd]

And strangely, they actually all run counter to my experience. For hard problems, I generally work best alone in long blocks of time at night.

[da5e]

Good point. This recent HN item speaks to that. http://www.stevestreeting.com/2010/09/04/work-2-0/ The interruptible programmer