While we're on the topic, one of my favorite blog posts of all time is his "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years"
https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html
That sounds about right. Whenever I have to revisit code I wrote more than 3+ years ago I tend to think "Why the hell did I do it that way?"
Occasionally, now knowing the trend, I'll even comment in an apology to my future self. When I encounter those past comments my general sentiment is something like "yeah, thanks for the spaghetti asshole, would half a day to clean this up have really been so hard?"
And sometimes I remember the circumstances of that spaghetti, boiled around 2:00 AM, and remember "nope, wasn't time". Even though now I can do it better and faster.
It's funny you mention this, as there is a big thread above that discusses his contribution to learning by reading, and his second point here is "Program. The best type of learning is learning by doing".
