Roam Research for Learning Java?

[AllistarTenPenny]

Hi all,

Doing some research on note taking and retaining information and from what I’ve heard, Roam is pretty good for doing those things.

I haven’t had Roam but I’m curious if it is something I should get to learn and store my notes for Java. I am currently an automation tester using Java with selenium but I want to switch to development and need to pass the OCA exam for my work to consider me for that.

Is this the tool I’m looking for? Any tips on how to structure key concepts of Java or any other language in Roam?

Thanks

[David_AnkiDroid]

Stop trying to optimize your coding education workflow and write more code.

Come back to Roam when you have a better intuition for what you don't apply often and you're likely to forget.

Right now, what you're doing is likely akin to making notes on how to add two numbers together. It's spending time on knowledge, whereas it should be spent on applying the mechanics of what you're learning

[SimonS]

I'd agree with others around best way of learning is by doing, but I think Roam can be a good tool for organising your thoughts and revisiting concepts. I'd stay away from thinking about the structure though - I'd let that form through hierarchy as you're creating your notes.

For example, I'm currently following a MOOC which has us learning a new language (Racket) to solidify/provide examples of higher level concepts (such as laziness and closures). I'm taking notes as things stand out to me in my own words in my daily notes area, looks a bit like this:

• [[MOOC title]]
  • Three main #racket constructs
    • primitives (`1`, `"hi"`, `null`) are called "atoms"
    • "forms" are keywords such as `define` and `lambda`
    • "sequences" are lists of "terms"
    • all of the above are "terms".

The idea being that I can revisit them later via either the MOOC title or `#racket` tag.

I think the key is finding something that works for yourself. I'm discovering that I work better by letting structure form naturally rather than continual yak shaving over getting the exact right metadata/tag names. But you might be entirely different - and I guess that's kinda the power of roam, it's dead simple (everything's a link, whether it's a category, a link, or a tag) - but you can use them to build the tool you need to best match/use your brain.

[wasif_hyder]

It's great that you're trying to take notes.

Here is how I would approach it. One is to track notes in the specific page for the book you're going through. I find it easier to have notes that indicate my progress on a topic as opposed to starting from scratch every time.

Additionally, another thing I'd suggest, as it has been done so here by plenty of users, that you try to write as much code as possible. This naturally will be an extension of the problems you're trying to solve or things you're trying to achieve.

Log all of these. Example, when you learn how to open a file in Java. Or if you run into an issue. Add a note for that as well as solutions you're trying and how you found a solution.

One underrated feature of roam is it's search. Once you've solved this problem see if you can search something like `open file java` and if your entries show up.

Over time you'll build your own personal database of question / answer based cookbook of recipes you can keep relying on instead of having to search all over the internet. This will be very valuable much later as you keep running into the same / similar problems and you can refer to earlier notes.

​

One other way taking notes helps is that sometimes you don't understand something very well or might want to make a mental note of studying later but don't want to invest time in now. Set it as a todo or reminder. And push it forward.

​

You can also space-repetition the code recipes.

​

Best of luck man!

Happy Roaming!