A Time to Learn

I’ve been rebuilding my vibe coding community site all night. While I’ve been at it, I realized how ill-prepared I am to deal with problems for the simple fact that I don’t know or understand the underlying technologies. Nor can I read any of the code that could be causing a problem.

I am heavily focused on developing for WordPress and I have hopes that others who join the site will take an interest in it. A planned part of the site is going to be a wiki that would contain information on the various technologies used in app and web development. I think now is a good time to start researching them and putting together that part of thee wiki.

I am going to be using learning systems, like making atomic notes and spaced repetition, to help me assimilate the large volume of information out there. I’, going to use flash cards with my own atomic notes about the technologies to comprehend and remember all the tech relevant to WordPress development. My hope is that I’ll be able to figure out where things may have broken down to better guide the AI in our development process.

I am also going to start learning the languages used. I’ll learn more than one at a time. I’ll do HTML, JavaScript, and CSS for one learning track, and PHP for another, maybe alternating which one I do on certain days. I will use the AI to try to learn related ideas, tags, syntax, and processes at the same time across all the languages.

I have been using Gemini and NotebookLM in my research a lot. I can do vast research on a topic, organize it in a mind map, get a brief video introduction, then slide decks on the different subjects in the mind map, followed by reports on specific points, elaborating on the information that I think is the most useful.

I think I can apply my AI tools in a similar way to learn the technologies and coding languages. I will do a deep research on a technology, then get a report on key items in the deep research to elaborate my learning on. I will then do deep researches on those topics.

For each deep research topic, I will create a notebook in NotebookLM (I can have up to 1500 notebooks). I will do fast research up to 300 semi-vetted sources for each topic. Then I’ll have a video overview to get a brief introduction or refresher when needed. I can generate a mind map and do a video overview of each node in the mind map (I can make 60 per day with my subscriptions).

To help with my comprehension, I will make atomic notes of the information and add them to a flashcard program like Anki, or I might code one for WordPress. On top of that, I will use my atomic notes to make voice overs for slide decks on the topics. I will have visual and audio for dual encoding learning, and spaced repetition for retention.

I’ll find ways to synthesize something from the information I’ve learned, and find a way to apply it. I could have Gemini take me through the process of using something I;ve learned in building an example, explaining to me at every step what we are doing and why, and how it fits in to the bigger picture.

It’s important I get this knowledge into me sooner rather than later. I’ve already been coding plugins with the AI, but I can’t be sure our solutions are the best choices, and I can;t help the AI when it can’t figure out where a problem might be coming from. This will take me beyond mere vibe coding and start to put me in the architect’s seat.