How to Take Notes for Computer Science Classes

Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Iman. I'm a student studying computer science and economics. And on this channel, we explore different productivity and study techniques that you can use to achieve your goals faster. Today, we're gonna talk about how I take notes for my computer science classes in university, along with some tips and tricks that I've picked up that you can use to supercharge your computer science study routines. Timestamps are in the description below. Let's go. So there are two parts to learning anything. The first part is being able to understand the subject, having the ability to put all the moving parts and pieces together and really understand how everything works. The second part is remembering your understanding or what you learned down the line, whether it's tomorrow, the next week, the next year, or 10 years from now. It's all about remembering in the second part. So if we apply this to a basic mathematics example like algebra, step one is actually understanding how algebra works, and step two is remembering how to do algebra for your test next week, next month, next year. This video is gonna focus on the first part. The memorization and retention techniques that I use will be explored in a further video. So at my university, the computer science courses mainly focus on two topics. The first part is the theory or the higher level understanding of the subject. This is where we look at the background of how everything is used, and it's a lot more conceptual. So if we were learning about arrays, we probably have a diagram of an array where we talk about how arrays work and the different methods that are associated with them. It's all a very high level conceptual point of view. Or if we were learning about sorting algorithms, we've maybe discussed several different algorithms and discussed why certain ones are faster or slower than other ones in different scenarios. It's more understanding rather than actually going in and writing code. The second part is the programming aspect where you actually go in and write the code. This is where you take everything you've learned in theory and apply it to actual problems that you need to solve. So for my college, we would get an assignment every week where we would have to use everything we've learned over that semester and in the past and put it all together and tackle an assignment. We'd spend five, 10 hours on our own or with a partner, really just putting our heads down and coding. That's the programming aspect of computer science. Both aspects are incredibly important to a computer science education. Right now, we're gonna talk about theory because programming is really just practice. So in this video, we'll focus on how you actually learn theory. So let's talk about how I learn theory. So usually the day before or a little before a lecture on a new topic, I like to crack out the textbook, lecture notes, lecture slides, basically any information I have before the lecture, I like to open that and take a look at that beforehand. When I'm looking through those, I like to take some notes in a separate document to really put down my understanding and I'll talk about why I do this. So there's a methodology called the Feynman technique. This is a methodology that is named after Richard Feynman. He's a great physicist of our past. And this method centers upon the idea that if you can't really explain what you've learned to another person, you don't really understand it. When I'm with my friends, I'll often practice by explaining to them. But when you're by yourself, you don't really have another person that you can talk to and bounce ideas off of. And that's where your notes come in handy. When you write something down, you're forcing your mind to really contextualize it and format it in a legible format. So when you write it down, it has to be readable, it has to all flow and make sense. If you leave everything in your mind and you don't actually put anything down, how do you know that you can explain it to someone else, that you actually understand it? However, if you can put it down in your own words, that's a great indicator that you have a good understanding, at least that initial understanding of the topic. There's a really great quote by computer scientist Nabeel Qureshi in his essay about understanding, where he says, "'It's harder to fool yourself "'that you understand something "'when you sit down to write about it "'and it comes out all disjointed and confused. "'Writing forces clarity.'" So that's why I always try to take some notes off to the side. So let's actually take some notes in real time. So let's say that I have my textbook over here on the left with a open text editor, anyone would do fine on the right. I basically just dug up a really old notes document that I had when I first learned about arrays. So we'll go through how I made that, why I made it like that, and what each individual section means and why it's there. What I like to do is I like to take this super dense textbook and reformat it, kind of condense it down into my own thoughts and make it a lot more readable in my notes document. So as you can see right there, there are bullet points, and it's just a lot easier to go through and understand than the super dense textbook on the left. So whenever I read a sentence or a line that is new information, I always decide to put that in a bullet, in a fresh bullet if it's really important. Then in that bullet point, I try to rephrase it or try to change it around. I don't like to copy the exact definition down. I want to sit down, think about it for a little bit, and then put that new definition down. So as you can see right here, we have my definition of an array. I tried not to take the exact definition from the textbook on the left. I kind of just move some things around. That forces you to think about it rather than just copying and pasting from the textbook. And if you're thinking about it, then that's all about understanding. And the point of this exercise is to force your mind to think rather than just reading a textbook and not really thinking about it or understanding it. Notice how I talked about how they are a reference type variable. At the time, that was a concept I was struggling with a little bit. So even though that wasn't necessarily in the book, I really thought about it and thought that was an important concept to put down. So don't let the book limit you. Whenever you have a question or something you don't really understand, use external resources and collect that information and then put your own thought process down on the page. So as you can see over here, I have gone through this textbook and really reformatted everything and put it down in my own words in a lot more legible, simple format. What I always make sure to do is to put down some sort of examples or case studies of whatever you're studying. This is hugely important because there's a lot of evidence that physical examples or visualizations of concepts are a lot easier to grasp or understand faster rather than just looking at abstract definitions. So if I was doing these notes on paper, I maybe would have drawn like a little box thing to represent an array. So over here, I just put down a random example, int with the brackets A, just to represent and kind of solidify what the syntax for declaring an array was. Another important aspect of picking examples is you wanna make sure that you can create your own examples. A lot of people, what they'll do is they'll just go in the book and they'll just copy and paste the example in the book. And just because you can copy and paste the example doesn't mean you actually understand it. So it's a true sign that you understand something if you can create your own example for that concept and then put that in your notes. So notice how I have another example there and another one down below. I really stress the importance of examples when you're trying to learn some new content. So the third most important aspect of taking your preliminary notes is you wanna make sure that you put down any questions or misconceptions or concerns that you have over the topic. Ideally, you're taking these notes beforehand, the day before, the week before, and you haven't learned this new stuff. So you're bound to have a ton of questions. And if you put those down, you won't forget them. And you can make sure to ask your teacher during the lecture when that lecture comes up. So that's what I do the day before the lecture. I always make sure to read through the textbook, read through the lecture notes, and create my own document where I'm reformatting and trying to really understand the topics before the professor teaches me. Now let's talk about what I do during the lecture. So ideally, during the lecture, you'll have your notes open, whether they're handwritten or typed. And the point of the lecture is to fill in any gaps that you had while doing your self-learning. Now, a lot of people complain about how professors aren't teaching you any information that you can't learn yourself. And I get this argument. I mean, you have your textbook, your notes. You can get a pretty good understanding of the subject without the professor. However, the professors have a level of experience and teaching skills that it's really impossible to get from a textbook. Every professor brings their own unique outlook on a certain topic with their own examples and own explanations. So it's really important to pay attention during lecture and put down any new or unique or novel examples or aspects of the topic that you didn't see in your lecture notes, that you didn't see in your textbook. You wanna consolidate everything into this one master document. If you did everything right, your notes should have your own rendition of the textbook information, the lecture notes, the lecture slides, and the lecture itself. So now let's talk about what the goals and impact of the system is, why I decided to go with this system for my computer science classes, and honestly, most of my other classes, because it just works so well. So this note-taking system produces two things. One, it greatly increases your understanding and knowledge of a topic before a lecture. If you can force yourself to sit down and make yourself write out notes, you are making yourself slow down and really think about a topic. And I find that in this day and age, a lot of us will tell ourselves, oh, we're studying, but we don't really slow down enough and try to understand it to a deep level. The second impact of this note-taking system is that at the end of lecture, you have this beautiful master document with literally all the information from that lecture, all the information in the lecture notes, the textbook, the slides, everything is together here. And the effects of that are remarkable. It's amazing to have one document where you have everything from all the different aspects of the topic, all the different places consolidated into one place. It's a great study aid. So those are the methods that I use to take notes for my computer science classes. Before and during lecture. In the next video, we'll talk about exactly what I do after lecture to practice my notes and make sure that I actually remember what I've learned for the test. So that's all for this video, but before you go, I'd like to ask you to check out Skillshare.com. Skillshare is an online learning community, kind of like Netflix for online classes. You can access thousands of different classes from all different topics, from creativity to video editing, to design, to filmmaking, anything and everything is on there. I have my own class on the fundamentals of C sharp, a really new programming language. So if you sign up for Skillshare, you can check that out. If you click the link in the description, you can get a two month free trial to Skillshare and help support the channel. That's two full free months of accessing thousands of online courses in all different topics and subjects. Anyway, thank you guys for watching. Make sure to hit the like and subscribe button and I'll see you guys later.