Programming Concepts

The other day I was having a conversation with dave (my flatmate) about school and university. Anyway, he made the point that he could never just remember stuff by reading it. He said he had to understand the subject, and once he did, would then remember it naturally. I agreed with him, and so did my girlfriend. In fact, I've had the same conversation with at least half a dozen people in the past six months or so. Seeing as I'd also been reading lots of programming related stuff about which programming language is the best, the benefits of typing systems and all kinds of other geekery, this got me thinking about when I was learning to program, and how (with the benefit of hindsight) to apply that. I currently know how to program, because I understand it. But how? They say that the best way to really learn something is to teach it, so why not, I hrmmmed to myself, write a bunch of joelonsoftware/paulgraham style essays explaining how I understand programming and programming languages?