Re(3): Initiative or otherwise?

in reply to Re: Re: Initiative or otherwise?
in thread Initiative or otherwise?

Kids, nothing is a bigger damned lie than the idea that you have to work really hard to gain knowledge.

Well that depends on how you define hard work.

There is no reason why you can't learn by reading over someone elses work. You don't have to do every single bit yourself.

Depends on how you learn. I've always found that I can read many books on a topic, read over source code, but then when I go to apply it I realize I don't really understand it.

Please dump this very puritan attitude towards work. The road to success is not long and hard. It's long and filled with fascinating and beautiful experiences

Who said programmer A didn't enjoy programming? Who said he didn't want to take his work home?

Update: I should also clarify, with regards to the "The As will have learned more than the Bs." comment, I'm assuming everything else is equal. Obviously if programmer B reads 6 books and writes 10000 lines of unrelated code, he'll probably have learned more.

Comment on Re(3): Initiative or otherwise?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re(3): Initiative or otherwise? by jepri (Parson) on Jul 08, 2002 at 05:26 UTC
I've always found that I can read many books on a topic, read over source code, but then when I go to apply it I realize I don't really understand it. But you also assume that everyone else shares your method of learning. Your comments imply that both programmers have to code to learn. What if programmer B didn't code at all that weekend, but thought about it in the shower, and chatted about it with a friend, and went for a long walk and drew some flow charts in the sand? Could he have learnt more? Or would he still have to write 10,000 lines of code. It looks like machismo to me. You have a link to the path of mastery, but the final part of the story relates how the student got so good he could do less work than anyone else, and still get perfect marks. He started out doing too much at the beginning, but got good fast. Sounds like A might be learning something that B already had. ____________________ Jeremy I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.	[reply]
Re(5): Initiative or otherwise? by cjf (Parson) on Jul 08, 2002 at 05:50 UTC
But you also assume that everyone else shares your method of learning. Nope, didn't assume, that's why I said "Depends on how you learn." :-). the final part of the story relates how the student got so good he could do less work than anyone else, and still get perfect marks. He started out doing too much at the beginning, but got good fast Yep. He learned about the subject and didn't have to put in as much effort to get good marks. Your point being...?	[reply]

In Section Meditations