The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

> If each person has a finite amount of time to spend either learning or sharing, we'd expect to find a negative correlation between output and experience. This, in turn, lowers the overall quality of content on any given subject

my counter would be that this is a U shaped curve, not a linear correlation. some reflection is good - you only know something when you can teach it, you dont know what you think until you force yourself to write things down, you learn faster when there are many people to correct you instead of having to personally experience everything first hand, etc - but there's some crossover where you're left not doing enough to support the amount of talking you've committed to doing. (this is related to the general study of optimal overhead, which i've tried to gather https://www.swyx.io/optimal-overhead)

Choose Java and move on with your life.

Promising premise immediately deflated by the four-square (and then the paragraphoid to over-explain the four-square).

Fine, let's scan over text because the four-square was over-explained. Groan, "Kit heads" -- that's the agon in this essay? Creators vs. consumers, artists vs. amateurs...or something else?

>> Kit heads will often say (or imply) that having the best kit leads to the best performance. That doesn't seem true. I couldn't ski the Lhotse Couloir even on the best gear ever made.

Did he really take this path to get to the "a good musician can play nice music well on a crappy instrument" insight, even if he doesn't quite reach the shore? Really, he made it only to "violinist holding Stradivarius isn't necessarily virtuoso". Never-the-less, I guess it was wrapped in a fit-for-consumption-by-management homily. Crappy kit for all!

>> I believe that one of the most important things an engineer or technical leader can do for their career is to practice, and develop, strong communication skills. It may seem like this belief is at odds with the point of this post.

Not in the way you think, friend. There is a stark difference between actually having an idea and expressing it well. It is quite another thing entirely for an engineer to sort out the muddled thinking of others (a daily job hazard). But I applaud the attempt, especially because I've been so critical. An essay!

[edit: you philistines! or give a cogent rebuttal!]