(e.g. I had a professor in college who would assign four problems for homework. I would have to work on each problem for some hours, take a walk, eat dinner, work on the problem some more, take another walk, sleep a night, and the next morning I would have the answer. Then I would move on to the next problem.)
Additionally, it often took me some time to fully grok a concept. Perhaps Mark is intelligent enough that he'll be able to pick up everything as it comes, but a lot of the concepts in computer science build on each other. It took me about three weeks to get my mind around object-oriented programming when I first learned it in high school.
I'm excited to see how this experiment goes and I wish Mark the best of luck. But I'll be amazed if he picks up two weeks worth of CS in a day without giving those concepts time to sink in.
When it comes to grokking difficult concepts, I can often grasp an idea at a basic level rather quickly, but it can take me up to months before I'm able to realize all the implications of it. Also, I've noticed the rate at which I grasp things is very dependent on how well it's taught. If a concept is taught well I can leverage it very quickly, but if I have to spend hours disentangling a concept I often don't end up able to leverage it until months later when my subconscious has had time to make sense of the idea.
