Chapter 5. Effective Study Practices for Developers

Let's imagine that you're back in school and midterm exams are coming up. How would you study? Some common approaches might be:

• Re-read the study materials or lecture notes
• Highlight and memorize the key terms
• Go over your notes constantly until test day comes

Those all sound like effective study practices. However, cognitive research has shown that many of the traditional study patterns that students have followed for decades simply do not work.

I didn't make up that list of study patterns. That's exactly what I used to do in preparing for exams. However, I discovered (after failing a number of tests) that these strategies failed miserably when it came to helping me to truly learn new concepts.