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Ask HN: Why are expert practitioners often so bad at teaching beginners?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are expert practitioners often so bad at teaching beginners?

#11

Post by labarilem »

I think teaching is a skill by itself. Effective teachers usually grasp the theory behind the learning process, while this is not necessarily true for expert practitioners. There is much more to this: knowing how to communicate effectively, how to keep learners engaged, adapting to your students etc. This means a person can effectively teach the basics without having deep technical expertise, it's simply not the most important skill in teaching beginners imo.

So assuming those are somewhat independent skills, you can find skilled practitioners and skilled teachers but in my experience it's hard to find someone with that skills intersection. I consider this kind of people quite exceptional.

Re: Ask HN: Why are expert practitioners often so bad at teaching beginners?

#12

Post by nonasktell »

Because complicated things become so obvious and natural that it's hard to even remember that some things are not inherently known by any of your peers.

It can be hard to accurately gauge your interlocutor previous knowledge, so you don't make them feel dumb by explaining too simple things, or by starting with too complex stuff.

>or point to obscure or very high-difficulty resources.

Although here I think that's on the learner to make an effort. If you want to learn X but you need Y to understand it, your next question should be how can I learn Y, and if you need Z to learn it, you should ask how to learn Z, and most of these questions can be answered by search engines, you don't usually need an expert for that.

"E.g: You ask an expert programmer for advice on how to learn to become a good programmer, they will almost always suggest mid tier resources."

Well once you went through something like CS50, you should be able to grasp mid tier resources, or at least be able to find out what you need to learn to go through them.

Re: Ask HN: Why are expert practitioners often so bad at teaching beginners?

#13

Post by ThalesX »

I lucked out and started working in a team where most people were there 5+ years and the real senior ones were 10+ years in the team. It was a cross functional team, somewhat isolated from the large organization, working on 'special projects' (government, military, police etc.) and it was comprised of engineers, testers, business analysists, technical project managers and a team lead. I spent so much time getting mentored, learning the ins and outs and being slowly ramped up to what I believe were great engineering practices.

I still attribute my engineering mind to that formative experience. At one point the company got bought out, teams dissolved and it became a hot mess where nothing was really done anymore. I left the team, with a heavy heart, and in a year's time the company was basically dead apart from some invested (crashed stocks so they must go up!) people that were left to maintain ongoing projects.

Since then, and it's been close to a decade, I haven't found any company where even a tiny sliver of hope exists to be able to mentor people the way I have been mentored. The landscape changed and everyone is looking for velocity. In my current role, whenever I ask a potential 'expert' if they have any experience with 'X' (due to their background in it), they just google, get to the first result and suggest that as a solution.

Re: Ask HN: Why are expert practitioners often so bad at teaching beginners?

#14

Post by airbreather »

Because to be expert the axiomatic building blocks must become instinctive, so you can use your limited working memory on higher order problems.

It's hard to explain instinctive things, or, for some, to understand why they are not automatically instinctive to others.

Re: Ask HN: Why are expert practitioners often so bad at teaching beginners?

#16

Post by mejutoco »

In my experience real experts are always good and teaching and synthesizing/summarizing and adapting to their audience.

Another matter is if an expert is approached by someone who does not put in even a bit of effort (looking for a mentor but rude, or did not do any prior research on their own).

Maybe it is too much of a tautology, but I would not consider someone that cannot communicate clearly an expert. The practitioner will need to put in the effort too, of course.

Re: Ask HN: Why are expert practitioners often so bad at teaching beginners?

#18

Post by m-p-3 »

I'm by no mean an expert, but there is some degree of knowledge I might take for granted. When I write documentation that may ends up in from of a beginner, I ask for someone who doesn't in my field to read it and tell me if they understand all the steps involved, as I may be skipping a detail unintentionally because to me it is obvious.

Re: Ask HN: Why are expert practitioners often so bad at teaching beginners?

#20

Post by ghilston »

I'm a strong believer in experts tend to forget what's it's like to be a beginner.

I was sitting down to join a voice call with a friend with the intention of introducing him to programming basics. I explained that we were going to "simply go over printing" and he informed he he wouldn't be able to work on this today, as his printer was in his basement and not accessible on such short notice.

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