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The silent majority of experts (2012)

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Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#61

Post by jacquesm »

blueflow wrote: post #52
bombcar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were a pilot and "held it wrong" you'd probably be dead, and Boeing would get away scott-free ... the first time. Somewhere between "everything is a death-trap, learn how to use it" and "this device is perfectly safe, because it cannot do anything" lies the mean we need to hit.

Not reading the available documentation for your tools is neglience either way.

I'm willing to bet a pretty good sum of money that no professional programmer has read all of the available documentation for all of their tools.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#62

Post by bena »

tester756 wrote: post #36
insightcheck wrote: post #6

Yep. On a related note, when I was younger, I searched for advice from experts for how to develop expertise in studying and productivity on Reddit. It led to lots of highly-upvoted advice (including stuff like supplements, largely with few real benefits besides placebo), popular blogs by influencers (like Scott Young), and popular self-help books. However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went on to…

>didn't browse the internet very much I see it other way Internet allows you to discuss everything you want with various people from your industry I think it allows you to become better not only faster, but also makes you more aware of different perspectives Why wouldn't you want to do so?

You realize what you did here, right?

You said you disagreed with the experiences of the OP and essentially the article.

Posited as evidence that your view was correct based on your opinion on what you perceive as the advantages of the internet.

Then treated your opinion as a fact that would be crazy to be argued against.

It's true. The internet does allow for easy communication between people. It does contain a whole lot of information. You can get the documents to most things. You can access most information quickly.

But that information doesn't require commentary. And it's not a guarantee that the people you want to talk to want to talk to you.

If I want to learn Rust, I don't go to a Rust forum, I look up the Rust documentation. If I want to know how to do something Rust, I search for the specific information. Oftentimes, my issue is a faulty assumption about how something works or not knowing the exact name of the method I want to call. Once again, that's not something I need personal interaction for. The very last thing I do, is ask people on the internet. Not out of any misguided misanthropy, but just because it's hardly ever needed.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#63

Post by afiori »

blueflow wrote: post #52
bombcar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were a pilot and "held it wrong" you'd probably be dead, and Boeing would get away scott-free ... the first time. Somewhere between "everything is a death-trap, learn how to use it" and "this device is perfectly safe, because it cannot do anything" lies the mean we need to hit.

Not reading the available documentation for your tools is neglience either way.

That is why it is allowed to buy morphine by the pound at Wallmart, you are trusted to understand the consequences and use it right.

More seriously, the actual objective is not blaming the guilty but rather avoiding the problems.

If system A interacting with system B is likely to causes an incident then either A, B, or the interaction need to change.

For surgeons all three have happened, the same for airline pilots.

The surgeon had to swear very convincingly to have "read the documentation" before being even allowed to think about "holding it wrong".

In the case of people using GPG wrong the only solutions you have is to make is easier to "hold right" or make is so heavy and painful that anyone without true determination gives up trying to "hold it" at all.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#64

Post by JumpCrisscross »

insightcheck wrote: post #6

Yep. On a related note, when I was younger, I searched for advice from experts for how to develop expertise in studying and productivity on Reddit. It led to lots of highly-upvoted advice (including stuff like supplements, largely with few real benefits besides placebo), popular blogs by influencers (like Scott Young), and popular self-help books. However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went on to…

> these people didn't spend time online reading blogs and Reddit, or blogging/self-promoting themselves

Or they’re online, they’re just not talking about what they’re experts in. Because they don’t want to spend their free time teaching a 101 class.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#65

Post by pvarangot »

peterangular wrote: post #22
insightcheck wrote: post #6

Yep. On a related note, when I was younger, I searched for advice from experts for how to develop expertise in studying and productivity on Reddit. It led to lots of highly-upvoted advice (including stuff like supplements, largely with few real benefits besides placebo), popular blogs by influencers (like Scott Young), and popular self-help books. However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went on to…

> Less in one's control, their parents were financially successful or were in competitive positions (e.g. were professors or physicians), so they may have learned these strategies from them, versus inventing them independently. As I grow older, I see a huge divide between those who have/had parental support vs those who don't/didn't. It doesn't even take financially or professionally successful parents. Many of my pe…

I tell myself it's the difference between starting adulthood at 14 or whenever your family fails you, and starting it at 24 or 26 after college. The extra years of "streetwise" usually come at an expense of early onset of burnout, for various reasons. Leaving your shell with the energy to take over the world at 26 usually results in more productive endeavors than when you are a teenager.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#67

Post by FredPret »

peterangular wrote: post #45
dgb23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in many cases it might be hard but in an unfair way. I think some people are just wired differently. It is easy for them to stay focused and disciplined for longer, so they never worry about it or try to seek help and just do the work. People who do seek help often have some weaknesses that they cannot seem to overcome by themselves. They are vulnerable and they can be exploited by snake-oil salesmen. Some ge…

I was a smoker for many years... everyone in the family smoked - father, mother, and brother. I was a dumb kid in an industrial town in Iowa - constant opportunity and social pull to consume nicotine. After awhile I didn't want to be a smoker anymore and found a self help book - "Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking." Friends of mine suggested it, and I found a PDF and read it during a dead afternoon at work. Instea…

Thank the gods for Allen Carr. He helped me too.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#68

Post by blueflow »

jacquesm wrote: post #61
blueflow wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not reading the available documentation for your tools is neglience either way.

I'm willing to bet a pretty good sum of money that no professional programmer has read all of the available documentation for all of their tools.

Yeah, that does not happen either, but it would be nice if professional programmers would at least try to read it instead of relying on reddit, stackoverflow and random peoples blogposts.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#69

Post by bluedino »

mmcgaha wrote: post #28
bombcar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's part of the reason the self-help and diet book section is so large; people love the idea that they can get what they want with one weird trick; but the reality is it's not very complicated, it's just hard .

Sometimes there really is a "one weird trick" that can help people. I used to get stuck on problems and it would cripple my productivity. A programmer with two decades more experience than me noticed what I was doing and gave me the best advice of my career. If you are interested in the solution, you can signup for my . . . Seriously though the answer was to just do something else. Don't sit around thinking about the…

>> Sometimes there really is a "one weird trick" that can help people. I used to get stuck on problems and it would cripple my productivity. A programmer with two decades more experience than me noticed what I was doing and gave me the best advice of my career.

If you could make that part about 5 minutes longer you'll have a future in YouTube commercials

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#70

Post by pvarangot »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #64
insightcheck wrote: post #6

Yep. On a related note, when I was younger, I searched for advice from experts for how to develop expertise in studying and productivity on Reddit. It led to lots of highly-upvoted advice (including stuff like supplements, largely with few real benefits besides placebo), popular blogs by influencers (like Scott Young), and popular self-help books. However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went on to…

> these people didn't spend time online reading blogs and Reddit, or blogging/self-promoting themselves Or they’re online, they’re just not talking about what they’re experts in. Because they don’t want to spend their free time teaching a 101 class.

The main reason why I don't usually talk seriously about what I'm an expert in on Reddit is that I sometimes can't deal with the cringe from the replies, usually it's ok but it's been really bad a couple times and that just pushed me off. Now when I am commenting on something I consider myself an expert of it's usually jokes and sarcasm.

Reddit is seriously full of teenagers LARPing as adults, or adults stoned to the point where they basically are behaving like teenagers... not that I have anything against that. When you start seeing it like that it's much easy to get what you want from it, like when I realized The Economist is mostly idealist very smart mid 20s college graduates on their first serious job.

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