I guess another reason why this is so effective is it forces you to understand the overall goal instead of getting lost in the small intricate steps. I often find myself thinking to much on complex scenario and forgetting what my initial goal was haha.

My man explained abstraction in detail.

That's like the levels of a abstractions of a field. A technician does no need to know physics to know how an engine works, but knowing the physics is always useful.

This will jumpstart my career with stack overflow.

I used Black Box Method to learn Black Box Method.

If you're not as STEM-inclined, another great way to understand this is music. It's far easier to learn an instrument through setting out to learn a song rather than learning the chords and building songs out of them.

I've found learning about compilers to be way easier using this method, just focus on each step and blackbox the rest, eventually you'll learn the entire thing

Topdown learning is the best way. I started learning things quicker when I stopped worrying about every detail. I eventually came to understand the details without even trying.

Instructions unclear: Black Boxed Computer Science and Graduated with a Ph. D.

add these things to this : 1. focus on basic concepts and dont rush. 2. find objective of learning 3. then find intermediate concepts used generally ( maybe you miss some which are not used regular but if required you can just google it ) 4. revision revision , so what ever you learn just revise within 30-40 hours again then lite revision again after a week , this will create new nuro paths , later when you recall even if you forget if you get hint you recall all and then do practice to hard concepts , hope it helps and do have goood sleep and while y learn avoid social media and extra stuff and stupid relationships ( you can talk with your person or give specific time or make them busy too , my my objective is not relationship advice but to protect your brain spaces more and yes we are social being you should hand out but under limit , priorities matters.

Legend has it people who are not using this method are currently working on assembly code that adds two numbers. Next step is adding binaries then creating hardware circuits. Then of course how electricity works and atoms and thw universe. But that is just the beginning

Dude, I just discovered your channel from this video and it is amazing. Keep up the great work!

I passed a whole uni course using this technique and I actually learned it better than other courses, but don't know why I never kept doing it, this video reminds me I should try it more :) Cool video, Thanks.

That's exactly what a Bachelor's in Mathematics is.

Amazing video Colin, thank you so much for it, first time viewer here, now, also a new subscriber

Loved this type of "Hey, here's a trick and my experience using it" video

Ive started doing this in the last 2 years. I just called it a new version of learning with the 5Ws. We as engineers and tinkerers tend to go STRAIGHT for the "how" too soon. Mastering the Why, then the What, of the total system will make the HOW 321783907218389 times easier to understand.

A simple yet an extremely good method. This method can be applied anywhere not just hackathons. Thanks for the video.

It's another word for Abstraction -- the frontend, the interface is simplified for use, and the internal mechanisms are hidden away from the user.

I think this applies to any form of learning. Thank you for the video, it really made me reflect on how I learn. I definitely need to use more black boxing before getting obsessed with the details.

tbh i dont know why this video appeared on my feed but i watched the whole thing because learning hard concepts has always been a struggle for me. I'm a firm believer that I can't move to step 2 if I dont start and finish step 1... sometimes i'll read a whole chapter in a book on something I already know just because of the integrity of starting the text book/this particular author's lesson plan from page 1. But I've never actually finished any thing I started studying. I always fall asleep and feel too overwhelmed to pick it up again the next week. This concept really helped and i hope to apply it effectively in the future. Also, I laughed because we're from the same area (10:57)

This is basically just the top down approach rephrased into different language. in a top down approach u split up a problem into an application layer and a foundation layer and then you play around with the application layer first and dive into the foundation later (or not at all). I have been learning like this since I am a kid and even theuniversity I go to teaches like this. I agree that for most people this is much more effective and efficient. The old school approach especially from elitist universities that teach u the very basic foundations of everything first and then work their way up, is extremely outdated and in most cases a complete waste of time.

It’s basically like drawing a rough sketch first before painting in detail: it keeps you focused on the entire picture and stops you from gettting bogged down in minute details

It's like studying the summary first and important formulas that you will be using to solve problems or answer questions in the exam. by doing this you will get ready way more faster and you can acctually take your time learning details and more complexity in the topic afterwards. I did that a lot when I didn't have time to study the whole thing. and it's good to know that this is a good tactic and to see other top tier learners use it as well. This video taught me that it's really a better way to approach concepts and it saves up much time and relieves stress too.

thanks for the view point. i mostly learn new things by like doing them twice (for example once i see it and do then i blindly do it with any % of errors then i fix the errors and mostly thats enough just fixing the errors makes you memorize the code and its key concepts). but now i feel like i can be even more efficent i am going to try this method for the game i wanted to make.

this concept is really helpful for my current work. i have noticed that learning complicated + related topics gets a lot easier when i don't try to "drill down deep" into the topic, rather taking a look at multiple related things and then "starting to tie it together". also the comment about u "beeing proud of your black cube drawing so ure gonna keep it around" was really cute and charming haha

Ty so much. I knew it’s good approach but didn’t know if it gets this much huge advantage like this. Ty again ❤❤

Congratulations on 10000 subscribers!

I love your videos , always to the point never wasting time like most KZfaqrs do for views! Thank you and keep it up, man !!

KZfaq is weird, it's only been 2 weeks since I started learning Python, as a complete outsider to the coding world and zero prior experience. Even so, I still understood segments of the video. Liked and subscribed, will come back to it again to test myself on the concepts used. Thank you.

Thanks, man. This was very enlightening.

Love love love this, so simple, thank you.

great video sir!! i really enjoyed it 🤠

Damn I remember when you had 46 subs. You've come a long way Galen :D

Black boxing is useful in another way as well. It can make you aware of your tools. I can't stress enough how useful it is to know something exists, even if you don't know all its details.

Thanks Colin. This is one of the big reasons I perform poorly in the contests because I don't know a lot of algorithms and data structures. If I use this and solve some more of 'em in contests, it can boost my confidence enough to not get bogged down to learn these difficult concepts eventually. Imma try this method out ✌️

I've been using this concept for years without even realizing it. Works all the time! All you need to know about any field or software or whatever, really, is the basics. And then like Colin said, the details will come later. Saves a lot of time on learning irrelevant jargons too! Thank you for this awesome video, Collin.

I faced this when trying to learn html and css, the more I dived into details, the more lost I felt. Eventually I got fed up and copy pasted some template code, tweaked it and now I feel like I gained more idea about web page design than I did with those detailed tutorials.

so glad I found your channel ,keep it up

That's been actually my method for any project in general (not just learning). I'm currently working on an App project, for example, and since it is my first app, there's a lot of unknowns. So I just define each major step on the process of making the app (like, each feature), and specify each one little by little, and it's like an iterative function. Each step has substeps that can also be splitted by itself (for example, in step Auth Feature there's the substep Do Login usecase, and in Do Login usecase there's the substeps Backend and Frontend). And instead of learning all I don't know how to do beforehand, when I start each step I do a research, so when it's time to implement Auth Feature I search about how to deal with authentication in the languages I'm using, when it's time to implement a Schedule feature, same thing, I search for schedule components that people are already using in my programming language, etc. In fact, I even have a whole life project planned this way lol

I actually used this method when learning JavaScript, and didn't even know that it was a method for learning concepts! Really helpful to learn the fundamentals and blackbox some of the more advanced stuff, so you actually learn the language itself, and then you deepen your knowledge of the workings of some of the pre-existing functions.

This video applies directly to material balance ideas that form chemical engineering. Great content

This is helpful for professional life too, since it can be easy to fall down the rabbit hole and spend ages trying to fully understand something, which can be valuable but also can cause friction with management types who want to see visible progress. Blackboxing can help defer research that would take a long time right now but might become obvious later.

Thanks colin ,i will try this blackbox technique

Thank you! I needed this much more than you know

amazing useful. currently I fall into a situation which struggle to understand the more details of complex DS, and I know that's not very important instead of understand how to use them.

Thank you! I have visualized (through Gateway Experience meditation) that a "box" in any dimension only requires two walls per dimension. In 1D, just two points define it; nothing can manipulate or view anything inside/between those two points. In 2D, those points are stretched into lines, and then two more lines are added to make a square. In 3D, like your cube, the square is stretched upwards, and then a top and bottom are added; two more for a total of six sides. Thus, I can capture/protect/hide items in any dimension I may find myself, using only two walls per dimension. I enjoy reducing a problem to what can be achieved with the least effort/resources, somewhat like taking machinery apart and seeing if it can still function with missing parts. Like in college, a friend replaced his mufflers with "glass packs" for performance which basically just go straight through; so, I learned the muffler is not required for making the car move/function, it's just added legal stuff.

That cube drawing though 😍

Vert practical and precious share, thanks!

Essentially this is "What is the minimum amount I need to know to make this work" which when I look at everything I need to learn is super helpful.

4:52 softest(weirdest) plugin ever!

Love that you’re from Mo county. Wish I could’ve seen this video earlier cause this is definitely useful right now 👏🏿

This puts words to how I think about things, I don't need details I just need the gist and how to use it. I will be OK, if I have real interest I will figure out the particulars later or never.

This basically top-down learning. It's very useful to understand things on an abstract level before getting specific and meticulous. You learn the specifics with experience, study, and relation.

I have been using the blackbox method in some places but thought it was my homegrown method. didn't know that it had a name. Anyways good video. Now i can improve my homegrown blackbox using the inputs from your video.

Great Video, Thank you for your advices 💪

Great video maan

Very good technique, very hard for my mind to allow me to think this way. I tend to grasp concepts atomically - I either get it all or I’m thoroughly confused

This is my main learning approach: i gather as much general info as i can (especially the name of a concept) and when I need details that's what google is for

12:49 "but it's not, uh... how do I put this... it's not too friendly for anyone who isn't not me" lmao 😭🤣

By the end of this vid, I’ve learn to love that black box, his been drawing outside the box

Great video. Thank you

An interesting take on black box abstraction. Which is part of systems engineering. Where a system is decomposed into functions, and those functions are independently developed, and then implemented and integrated within the system as black boxes. This lowers the complexity of system as most of the implementation complexity is hidden. Ultimately this is how human beings build extremely complex things. Of course, Colin is taking a different angle on this.

I know this is an old video but I wanted to share something similar, I took a black jack class, and on a 20% pay out there’s a method that requires no math at all, just knowing what’s bets are on the table, you are able to quickly pay it out with insane accuracy with out knowing what you just paid, you just know it’s right. Going back, I understand it, but when I learned it, I had no idea

Thank you! I now have a word to put to the way I have been doing everything lol.

I'm way too ADHD / OCD-ish to learn this way. I always deep dive on a topic and learn everything I can about it before moving on to the next topic. While this isn't the most effective way to solve any one problem the fastest, it has helped me surpass many of my colleagues who use the black box method for every single problem over the 15+ years I've been programming. There's definitely trade-offs between breadth-first and depth-first learning, and it's important to know when to choose which method for each problem you encounter. I encourage everyone not to forget to go deeper occasionally when you find something you're genuinely interested in, especially if you might use it again later (which people are awful at predicting, because most things are applicable later if you truly understand them).

thank you sir,it was a nice video

made so easy. thanks dude

ima try this right now!

I've participated in a CP competition before, but that did not allow any sort of outside info (no internet connection, you could not even use a book you brought), so this would not help much - but outside that competition, it's an useful technique everywhere, not just in CP...

We live in the era of information overload thus it's essential to filter and simplify information we consume and search to be able to function (and keep our sanity) in this world. I've created this technique kinda subconsciously and been using it almost intuitively and for all topics even outside of the field of programming. Especially in programming it's necessary to look at things at "high-level scope" and use abstraction. The goal is to have the largest concept map in your mind, know the tools, their usecases and how to apply them (etc.). The one of the main benefits is this gives you more motivation and get rid of frustration because you see more results as you know more things and can use them to create better projects and solve harder problems, instead of digging deep into a rabbit hole learning one concept fully.

I also believe it's less discouraging cause even though you don't fully understand all the concepts, you can still use them.

For what it’s worth, that’s an awesome black cube drawing

awsome video, it's helpfull

10k subscribers coming soon, Colin getting ready for face reveal

You talk so clear. I am listening to you on 2.5x and can clearly hear all words !

Quite liberating idea

You went to Moco Blair high school? No wonder you’re so good!! That’s where all the smart kids go!!

This guy is single-handedly saving all careers

black-box everything first, learn concepts as needed. great strategy to not getting overwhelmed by learning everything before it is needed.

Didn't know their was a name for this strategy. Been doing it for years

Very nice video subbed

All my life I’ve been unconsciously using this technique without knowing it’s name 😅 I’m a self taught person and my friends say I learn stuff fast, but the reality is I’m the embodiment of a Jack of all trades master of none lol (well actually I do get deep in some concepts the I really need). But yea I usually create a big abstract picture of how things work before even learning the details, then it’s easier to learn the details. Thanks god for my internal black box!

When I was learning the 7 OSI layers in university, they somehow thought it was a good idea to learn from bottom up and top down at the same time, separated by 4 3-credit mandatory courses, with 4 different professors using 4 different textbooks. 1st course: physical layer to data link layer with math 2nd course: physical layer to transport layer without math 3rd course: transport layer layer to data link layer with algo 4th course: application layer to transport layer but this course's professor is frankly hard to understand It is entirely possible to learn both bottom up or from top down approach, but it should be executed very well. Conflicts can happen because of miscommunication between teachers.

Oh man. Explains why i learn so quickly when i just immediately hop into complex stuff, especially in math and programming. I stopped using this method because of guilt and thinking that im not "learning effectively" by starting from top to bottom. Learning from the bottom from simple things has been so wasteful of my time because i focused too much on little things as to understand EVERYTHING, which hindered at my academic progress. Thank you

That's a nice looking cube

This is basically the same thing as priming, but with the added twist of applying and using the unknown "black-box" as soon as you have a brief understanding of its: characteristics, location in relation to other components and surroundings, as well as what it does. To understand what makes this thing in the "Black-Box" tic isn't actually required to start using it. But if you know what black boxes you have and how they relate, you will notice that the more complex knowledge will suddenly magically light up in the right boxes. And especially if you are actively using the boxes in various new situations.

just like in complex equations, blackboxing one or even a few variables is fine, but doing this with too many at one time can lead to compounding complexity where outcomes become simi random. this is how most people code, but i would recommend treating each as a standalone piece understanding the input to outputs, then add it to a larger puzzle.

Impressive stuff! I stopped watching 10 seconds in but the black box looks great! Drawing boxes is a hard concept as you said in the title but I hope everyone learnt something new here today :)

This is how I learnt programming, Operating Systems, App Development, Frontend and basically 80-90% of the stuff I do.

i've lived for 20 years using the black box method. but now, i know the precise name of what i'm doing lol

Very good video, only caveat is that if the Black Box method doesn't work when the Black Box doesn't work :P In a perfect world, all code is without bugs, but we do not live in a perfect world. So sometimes the black box won't work.

I subbed ... Nice video

Thank you! Sooo basically it's understanding a concept/idea/mechanism you don't understand well enough I watched about half the video since I got lost in the sauce. I'm no computer programmer but as an artist, this broadened my perspective on things.

Agreed. Black boxing (and copying code blindly) are usually the easiest ways of getting stuff done while you're learning what you need to move forward. That's why you see blind copying a lot in junior devs.

Is this equivalent to the Top-Down approach?

yt recommended, nice and informative video! - by mico

One possible example might be the teaching if electric circuits at the level of "lump" theory. While there's also simplification going on (ignoring parasitic capacitance, treating wires as perfect conductors), the model focus in what goes in and out of components, and the expected transformation.

This guy speak wisdom. Took me 4 years of professional career to get me the same conclusion.

That's a beautiful cube