I've been reading hacker news and related sites for years, but it was only after I attempted to actually apply all that knowledge I thought I had that I realized how unprepared I really was.
This is the key bit. When my kids started getting "real" homework sometimes they would say "But Dad, why do I need to do the homework? I completely understood what the teacher was talking about!" And my response was, "Great, since you already understand it, doing the homework will be no problem at all." But the real message was there are two kinds of understanding, one where you think you know what you know, and one where you know you know what you know.
Only by applying the knowledge you think you understand to a new problem, can you prove to yourself and others that you have actually got that knowledge. In my case it actually feels like it moves into a different part of my brain (weird I know but it's the simplest way to describe it). In Boy Scouts we got a lot of training in various camping "skills" but it was the Jamborees where you had to use those skills in competition where the knowledge went from theoretical to practical.
This is the key bit. When my kids started getting "real" homework sometimes they would say "But Dad, why do I need to do the homework? I completely understood what the teacher was talking about!" And my response was, "Great, since you already understand it, doing the homework will be no problem at all." But the real message was there are two kinds of understanding, one where you think you know what you know, and one where you know you know what you know.
Only by applying the knowledge you think you understand to a new problem, can you prove to yourself and others that you have actually got that knowledge. In my case it actually feels like it moves into a different part of my brain (weird I know but it's the simplest way to describe it). In Boy Scouts we got a lot of training in various camping "skills" but it was the Jamborees where you had to use those skills in competition where the knowledge went from theoretical to practical.