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I firmly believe that when you are trying to learn something, it is always “easy come, easy go”.  It is also applicable to other aspects like love, friendship etc. A friend who seems to come in to your life effortlessly also fades out of your life quickly. So, is the case with love, I guess. 

This book is total crap. The author gives a sermon on how to learn things in the first twenty hours. Most of what he writes is taken from books that I have already come across. Nothing is original. Amazing really..people can’t even bring originality in crap!. As though he has to justify his crap, he mentions about using his methods to learn Yoga, Touch typing, Go, Ruby programming, instrument called Ukulele and windsurfing.

Well, I can’t comment on things like windsurfing, touch typing, Go as I have no clue how easy or how difficult they are.  However I have had experience with Ruby and I play an instrument. So, I can at least relate to those activities. Reading author’s experiences about those two activities, I felt that the author has done a great disservice by presenting them as something that can learnt quickly. Trivializing such things is ridiculous. Why do I call it trivializing? Because in either of the cases, be it learning an instrument or programming, you basically skim the surface and that’s about it. Spending 20 hours on an instrument, you will probably learn the most popular song and hit a few notes here and there. That’s about it. It will help you pose as though you have learnt an instrument . Far from it, you will know from inside that you are a fraud and you fear that people will soon figure it out that all you know are a few songs and nothing else. In the process your experience with the instrument is shallow.

In the case of programming it is even worse. Knowing syntax of a language, typing a few commands and accomplishing a few tasks is something that you can’t even pose for a long time. Programming languages like Ruby have a false appeal that they are easy to learn. Yes, but sometimes such languages are like models. They have a limited shelf life or should I say ramp life. Try to put in 20 hours in C++ and you will be swimming in an ocean of concepts. Your head will start spinning and you either give up or become tenacious and spend days and days on it to learn it deeply. I notice that the author had the audacity to put “Anything Fast ” in the subtitle. One thing is for sure, his clientele, i.e. readers are going to forget him FAST.