11–20 of 49 posts
That's usually how you can identify good people: when they can explain complicated things using simple words, in a way that their audience can understand it. People that need lots of expensive words and leave you feeling dizzy at the end of their presentation often don't know very well what they are talking about either.
"If you’re not learning you’re standing still" This is a large understatement. In our industry, if you're not learning you are drifting backwards rapidly. I aim for twenty hours a week of (unpaid) reinvestment and learning. Some weeks I still feel like that's not enough to stay current. Does anyone else feel the same way?
It didn’t work for me at all, and ended up basically killing every joy in my side projects. If I missed a scheduled hour (because I was doing something else fun) I felt like a failure. I could only focus on “I should be working on x” instead of actually thinking about x.
These days I try to not worry too much about what I should learn/produce, and rather work on what interests me at the time. I’m probably not learning at the most effective rate, but at least I’m having fun.
"If you’re not learning you’re standing still" This is a large understatement. In our industry, if you're not learning you are drifting backwards rapidly. I aim for twenty hours a week of (unpaid) reinvestment and learning. Some weeks I still feel like that's not enough to stay current. Does anyone else feel the same way?
If you're going for excellence in your world, which is usually the goal of the staff programmer, you're better off focusing on the details of the world you're in - new libraries, releases, details of governance etc. Yes you should learn new languages now and again, to dip your toe in other worlds; that's foundational and good and keeps you agile. But most of the stuff you see on HN isn't foundational, and so you don't really need to pay attention to anything not happening on your world.
I thought the Feynman technique was: 1) Write down the problem 2) Think real hard 3) Write down the solution In other words, the "draw the rest of the fucking owl" of general learning/problem solving.
That's usually how you can identify good people: when they can explain complicated things using simple words, in a way that their audience can understand it. People that need lots of expensive words and leave you feeling dizzy at the end of their presentation often don't know very well what they are talking about either.
That's usually how you can identify good people: when they can explain complicated things using simple words, in a way that their audience can understand it. People that need lots of expensive words and leave you feeling dizzy at the end of their presentation often don't know very well what they are talking about either.
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. - Albert Einstein
That's usually how you can identify good people: when they can explain complicated things using simple words, in a way that their audience can understand it. People that need lots of expensive words and leave you feeling dizzy at the end of their presentation often don't know very well what they are talking about either.
I've had profs in college who were brilliant but couldn't teach, and profs who could teach but weren't brilliant (didn't produce much original research).
I wouldn't say the former group "didn't know their material well", but they didn't build up the material systematically. Pedagogy was neglected. Explaining things is an art that not every has the inclination to master (but they should).
My friend’s dad is an inventor and discovered that the best way to retain knowledge is to teach it, which is why most students forget 90% of the source material. Most teaching is based on students inputting knowledge not outputting it.
That's usually how you can identify good people: when they can explain complicated things using simple words, in a way that their audience can understand it. People that need lots of expensive words and leave you feeling dizzy at the end of their presentation often don't know very well what they are talking about either.