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Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

nair.sh

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Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#312

Post by randusername »

dyauspitr wrote: post #93
gib444 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my experience. You describe it more diplomatically than I do hah. To me, young people just don't seem to know, or want to know, that information and knowledge can be gained from a person. It's the arrogance of youth x100 They have a supercomputer in their pocket/on their desk, and an AI that knows 'everything'. I can't imagine what it's like being a teacher right now. How's your AI going to explain the office…

I don’t think it’s the arrogance of youth. It’s just that this generation and honestly a big cohort of millennials are not used to gleaning information from people. A stunning number of people have been raised/educated solely by the internet. That’s the source for knowledge, not other people.

Yes, and this isn't necessarily a moral failing.

It is a problem as old as human civilization that the old overlook that society itself changes and instead lament the willfulness of the young in abandoning the old ways.

It isn't like young people grew up surrounded by examples of mentorship and arrogantly chose otherwise. In the internet age 1-on-1 face-to-face instruction is rare. I feel really fortunate that I caught the tail end of it.

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#313

Post by teddyh »

hamstergene wrote: post #69

Because the most important parts of the expertise are coming from their internal "world model" and are inseparable from it. An average unaware person believes that anything can be put in words and once the words are said, they mean to reader what the sayer meant, and the only difficulty could come from not knowing the words or mistaking ambiguities. The request to take a dev and "communicate" their expertise to anoth…

  The tao that can be described
  is not the eternal Tao.
  The name that can be spoken
  is not the eternal Name.
— Tao Te Ching, chapter 1 https://ttc.tasuki.org/>

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#316

Post by unsettledturtle »

spdionis wrote: post #273
kharak wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always had excellent model building functionality for abstractions and got the "physics" of a subject rather quickly, be it economics, biology, certain mathematical subjects and more. Then, I met software and computer science abstractions, they all seemed so arbitrary to me, I often didn't even understand what the recipe was supposed to cook. And though I have gotten better over time (and can now write good solu…

I have the opposite experience. Goes to show the difference between people. I've always had trouble internalizing the "physics" of physics or chemistry, as if it were all super arbitrary and there was no order to it. Computation and maths on the other hand just click with me. Philosophy as well btw. I guess I deal better with handling completely abstract information and processes and when they clash with the real wor…

Chemistry in particular is just taught very poorly in USA middle/high school. If anything, it perfectly hinders building that internal understanding.

"Chemical bonds fill the electron shells, which is why we have CO2. But don't worry about why carbon monoxide exists."

"Here's a formula to figure out the angle between atoms in a molecule. But it doesn't apply to H2O, because handwavy reasons. Just memorize this number instead."

Students don't gain an understanding of the subject, because the curriculum doesn't even try to teach it.

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#318

Post by _glass »

hibikir wrote: post #209
hamstergene wrote: post #69

Because the most important parts of the expertise are coming from their internal "world model" and are inseparable from it. An average unaware person believes that anything can be put in words and once the words are said, they mean to reader what the sayer meant, and the only difficulty could come from not knowing the words or mistaking ambiguities. The request to take a dev and "communicate" their expertise to anoth…

A non-trivial part of the big difference between the juniors that seem talented and "get it", and those that don't is precisely their ability to form accurate enough world models quickly. You can tell who is going at the "physics" of software and applying them, and who is just writing down recipes, and doesn't try to understand the nature of any of the steps. It's especially noticeable when teaching functional progra…

there's actually a really good book that bridged it well for me when I was doing my bachelors, A Little Java, A Few Patterns. this is from the famous lisp books for groking FP.
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