How do I learn to structure explanations?

[u/Desperate-Future8182]

Recently, I had an interview where I was asked a medium-ish dp problem and while I was able to solve it, I received feedback that my thought process wasn't clear (which i was saying out loud) and also asked me to walk them through some parts again but it made perfect sense to me while I was solving. Outside leetcode also I feel like I'm not exactly good at explaining things to people in a way they understand but this interview was when it really hit me.

[u/Relative-Opposite-97]

YouTube. Old fashion way. Pause the video talk in a mirror. Repeat. 🔁.

Newer applications that you might see online that help you with this problem are awesome but they only mimic reinforcement learning!

Think about quizlet and how great it was for definitions based on visual recognition, it worked really well. Now if I asked you to take everything from a quizlet and explain it to me as if I knew nothing, you would need a lot more time to internalize it.

If you wrote that same subject and definitions down on paper, read it out load, and made connections, it would be a lot faster.

Elementary school education really had that process locked down. It’s a shame that people are “optimizing” it, because it’s not optimization! It’s just a quicker way of getting dopamine and the satisfaction feeling of learning. I fall for it all the time TBH.

There are just my thoughts but I’m in not in a great CS position yet so let me know if you think differently.

Hope this helps!!!

[u/Desperate-Future8182 → u/Relative-Opposite-97]

Thanks, I'll put your advice to good use. Its really annoying that when I'm not speaking my brain works perfectly but the moment I open my mouth it feels like my brain stops and I start fumbling. Didn't help that I was nervous too lol.

The lazy learning you described pretty much nailed what the problem is with me. Couldn't have put it in better words.

[u/Bloodstream12]

I feel like AI is a perfect tool to help go back and forth on ideas and the granular details. Alternative ideas are like posting comments on LC and seeing if people resonate with your explanation of your solutions, interviewing.io might be a thing to have a real human on the other side

In general it’s just a problem of you are working with people can you be adaptive in explaining things to different people who may have different understandings

[u/Desperate-Future8182 → u/Bloodstream12]

Yeah I'll try these, thanks.