Red Squirrel Reflections Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development

[Previous entry: "Structure and Behavior Revisited"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "A More Interesting Problem to Solve"]

Don't Hide Your Ignorance
Saturday, July 17, 2004

My appetite for learning drives me to read as often as possible. This appetite was sparked when I started learning my first programming language in late 2000. By late 2001, I was a full-blown bookworm. Soon after, I started scribbling and underlining continuously as I read. This eventually evolved into transcribing my favorite quotes onto a piece of scratch paper that I kept as a bookmark. Having all of those interesting thoughts on scratch paper seemed like a waste, so I started transcribing them onto a web page. Over the last couple years, that simple page of HTML has steadily grown, and is now close to 200K.

My wife and I are on the plane to Ft. Lauderdale right now (a quick weekend getaway for our seventh anniversary) and I was reading The Fifth Discipline (surprise, surprise). With two pieces of scratch paper completely full of quotes, I figured now would be a good time to take a break from reading and start transcribing onto my quotes page. When I got to the following quote, I noticed that I had written some thoughts after it.

The quote:

"Even if we feel uncertain or ignorant, we learn to protect ourselves from the pain of appearing uncertain or ignorant. That very process blocks out any new understandings which might threaten us. The consequence is...teams full of people who are incredibly proficient at keeping themselves from learning." (55)

My response:

"That is the dissonance I feel...the pressure to appear competent when I feel out of my league...when I have been trained to come at things from a "not knowing" perspective...to be transparent about my ignorance in order to facilitate learning."

The context of my response was based on my recent experiences on a new project in which I was brought in to replace a colleague who was significantly more experienced and technically gifted than myself. Being transparent about my assessment of myself with my client has been valuable in developing an open relationship and with accelerating my learning of this unfamiliar domain.

Replies: 2 comments

That quote reminds me of this...

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1840.htm

Posted by Jason Yip on 07/17/2004

Thanks for the link Jason. My favorite quote from that page:

"Whatever my business might be, I'm best served when I begin by finding the place where I know the least. If I begin as the expert, I learn nothing. But, when I start out ignorant, then the fun really begins."

Posted by Dave Hoover on 07/19/2004

Powered by Greymatter