Meerkat manifesto suggests mentor-learner pairs speed up learning of tech stacks

Author here, happy to follow up. We wrote the Meerkat manifesto after our experience Hacker Retreat batch 01. The meerkat method should be more effective than the (few) alternatives we tried. If you hear from people having success doing something similar systematically (pair up; mentor picks a project, gives it to learner, only simplifies if learner is really stuck)... let me know. General lore says that people who pair up more improve faster. The twist here is to pair up with a person who is far more advanced and is invested in getting you up to speed.

My first thought on reading this is that it's counter to what's recommended with Deliberate Practice. This system seems to start with failure and then backs off on the difficulty until the learner succeeds. Deliberate Practice starts within the learner's capability, and pushes outward, trying to stay right at the edge of the learner's capability. I don't see how starting out with failure is going to be very encouraging to the learner.

i&#x27;m actually doing the mentor role atm for a couple of people, but in one or two of the situations I can&#x27;t really send them work home to do on their own.<p>So i&#x27;m taking the active role in the pair programming, and showing rather than having them doing. At least they will have the reference afterward.<p>gitbook looks like a pretty nice way to collect all that knowledge though.<p><a href="http://www.gitbook.io" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gitbook.io</a>