>> Perhaps I'm just too much of a perfectionist then.
>
> That is common for people in technical fields - so you're not alone.

Let's face it, usually the reason I write something is that somebody 
else has written it, badly, and I want to do better. (Anyone here read 
Real World Haskell? For such a hyped book, written by well-known experts 
of the field... it's not actually that good!)

>>> Then that's not actually a mindmap.
>>
>> Well, OK, I don't know what the precise term is, but I drew a chart of
>> all the topics I wanted to talk about and which ones are interrelated.
>> You know what? *EVERYTHING* is interrelated!>_<
>
> That's a start.  Problem is that nobody really teaches how to use them
> effectively, certainly not in the US schools.  I would've done much
> better in school if I'd been taught how to use that as a way of taking
> effective notes, for example.

Or maybe it's just that "Haskell" is a really *huge* subject...

>> OK. Well maybe I'll try again with something slightly less insane...
>
> That's the way to do it, start with something simple, and work up to the
> larger projects.  You wouldn't try to play Beethoven's 9th Symphony on
> the violin without first working through Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, so
> don't try to do a symphony your first time out writing.

Didn't Mozart write Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at the age of 6?

>> I still remember the "research training" we did at university. This
>> consisted of knowing where the library keep the various documents they
>> hold. No indication of how you figure out what documents exist or which
>> ones might be useful or...
>
> That sounds about as useful as a class my stepson has just audited - he's
> in his 4th year (of 4) at Uni here, and one course he hadn't taken
> because his schedule didn't fit it was "how to use the library" (I'm not
> kidding about this).

Well, that's really all that our research training was. It's not about 
how to research, it's about how to use the library. It was even given by 
one of the library staff. No indication of what is *in* these documents 
or anything, just "they're on shelf 5B".

> For me, though, it comes down to the word association game

When searching with Google, I never know whether I'm just using the 
wrong search term, or whether the document I'm searching for actually 
doesn't exist. I rather suspect it's almost always the latter. (Except 
that every now and then, Darren will pop up and write an almost 
identical search term and it comes back with useful data...)

> So I guess the other part is learning how to break a complex topic down
> into manageable pieces.  That's also a learnable skill, and not something
> that anyone innately knows how to do.

Oh, I think I've got that down. It's putting the pieces back together 
into a coherent whole that I don't do well.

Ask me "how does pattern matching work in Haskell?" and I can write 
about that. Ask me "how do you optimise performance?" and I can write 
about that too. Ask me "how does type unification work?" and I can do 
that too. Ask me "how do I write a program in Haskell?" and I go into a 
redraft spiral from which there is no escape...

Each individual concept isn't too difficult to explain. Trying to figure 
out the best order in which to explain all of them is maddeningly difficult.

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