Things I Don’t Know as of 2018
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Things I Don’t Know as of 2018
1–10 of 226 posts
Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018
#2Why is this kind of “confessional” necessary? This strikes me as very American - this need to think you’re “the greatest” at everything and then beat yourself up when you realise you can’t be.
Look... do we say Beethoven was a lousy composer because he never conceived the 12-tone system or mastered extended techniques or knew anything about Indonesian music? How absurd! Those were all things for later composers to discover and specialise in.
Specialisation is just fine, thank you. It’s perfectly fine to consider oneself a good programmer!, having mastered only one or two languages.
Americans, please quit the silly moaning and self flagellation and get on with your day jobs. Thanks.
Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018
#3Why is this kind of “confessional” necessary? This strikes me as very American - this need to think you’re “the greatest” at everything and then beat yourself up when you realise you can’t be. Look... do we say Beethoven was a lousy composer because he never conceived the 12-tone system or mastered extended techniques or knew anything about Indonesian music? How absurd! Those were all things for later composers to di…
You might not mean to do it, but the tone in this message seems to be quite condescending.
I believe you are making a generalization that is quite unnecessary. Surely not all Americans are like that, and I am sure plenty of Europeans share that mindset. (I am one of them, I like being the best in something as I am competitive. In sports, games or programming).
In my neck of the woods, the stereotype for this kind of behaviour would be Japanese more than American btw.
Either way, I do agree that this post is a bit useless. No one is expected to know absolutely everything there is to known. Why know the web when you program embedded devices for the car industry, for example :)
Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018
#4Why is this kind of “confessional” necessary? This strikes me as very American - this need to think you’re “the greatest” at everything and then beat yourself up when you realise you can’t be. Look... do we say Beethoven was a lousy composer because he never conceived the 12-tone system or mastered extended techniques or knew anything about Indonesian music? How absurd! Those were all things for later composers to di…
Dan Abramov is a Russian living in the UK.
Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018
#5I thought Dan wrote react dnd in typescript.
Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018
#6Why is this kind of “confessional” necessary? This strikes me as very American - this need to think you’re “the greatest” at everything and then beat yourself up when you realise you can’t be. Look... do we say Beethoven was a lousy composer because he never conceived the 12-tone system or mastered extended techniques or knew anything about Indonesian music? How absurd! Those were all things for later composers to di…
> Why is this kind of “confessional” necessary?
The author explains very clearly his reasoning:
"Here’s why I think it’s important. First, there is often an unrealistic expectation that an experienced engineer knows every technology in their field."
> this need to think you’re “the greatest” at everything and then beat yourself up when you realise you can’t be.
That's exactly the kind of mindset that Dan is trying to dispel.
Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018
#7I thought Dan wrote react dnd in typescript.
Nope. Dan wrote it in JS originally, then handed off maintainership of it a while back (possibly before he wrote Redux in 2015). Looks like it may have been ported to TS this year: https://github.com/react-dnd/react-dnd/pull/1017
Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018
#8> People often assume that I know far more than I actually do. That’s not a bad problem to have and I’m not complaining.
It is also not a good problem to have, either. There will always be a few people who think you know everything, and a few people who think you know nothing. The only plausible reason why everybody would think you know everything is that you act like you know everything around everybody. Put differently, if most people think you know more than you do, it would imply that you are not very humble in your interactions with most people.
> Folks from minority groups often suffer the opposite bias despite their hard-earned credentials, and that sucks.
Does it suck, though? It is much better to be underestimated than to be overestimated. I've read a lot of Dan's articles. He offers a lot of interesting insight and advice in pretty much every article he's written. The guy comes off as a know-it-all! Not saying it's bad, but it something to introspect on if you constantly find people overestimating your abilities.
Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018
#9I don't know anything about the person who wrote this, but I know almost everything they don't know. Am I a much better programmer/engineer than I thought?
Re: Things I Don’t Know as of 2018
#10> People often assume that I know far more than I actually do. That’s not a bad problem to have and I’m not complaining. It is also not a good problem to have, either. There will always be a few people who think you know everything, and a few people who think you know nothing. The only plausible reason why everybody would think you know everything is that you act like you know everything around everybody. Put differe…
I wouldn’t say he comes across as a know-it-all.. everything he’s written that I’ve read has to do with React or a few closely related subjects. And his writing never has a tone of superiority or “this should be obvious” that is, IMO, a requirement to be a know-it-all
I personally kind of figured he knew a lot about everything Webdev related since he knows so much about React, but that’s obviously not the case now that he’s listed all that out. In fact, now I don’t feel like the extent my knowledge is as limited as I did because I have a basis for comparison! Which I.. figure might be the point of the article?