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Experts have it easy (2024)

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Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#91

Post by beyarkay »

gitremote wrote: post #49

> This explains the difficulty of training new employees when all your experts are working remotely, as remote work practically eliminates any sort of casual unguided “water-cooler” interaction. In software development remote work, the novice can learn from the expert by screen sharing how they're working on a problem, sometimes called a working session. The expert can point out more efficient ways of working, like i…

(author here) I'm not sure I agree. I certainly think that screen sharing is better than nothing, but remote screen sharing is a strict subset of what you can do while in-person. Working remotely means there's some higher bar for quickly bugging a colleague, since you have no idea if they're casually reading their emails or if they're in deep focus.

I can't describe how many times I've been saved days of work because a senior casually asked what problem I was working on as we both waited in line for a coffee, and they were able to point me in the right direction. As described in the essay, the novice doesn't know when to ask for help.

There are other, tangential, reasons to prefer remote work over in-person, but I don't think there's any reason why remote work would be better at educating novices.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#92

Post by beyarkay »

pards wrote: post #37

> sometimes you [novice] just need to be able to show them [expert] what you’re doing without any specific question in mind > the vast majority of learning comes from a novice watching how the expert plies their skills, and not from direct questions and answers This succinctly describes why pair programming can be valuable when used judiciously. I've seen large institutions hold long, boring "knowledge transfer" sess…

(author here) If you haven't watched the Factorio head developer's bug-fix videos on youtube, you really should. They're a goldmine of insight. Also the second video is a very strong case in favour of peer-programming.

> novice drives, expert advises

I've not heard this explicitly recommended, but it's so clearly the best way to do things if learning is the goal.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#93

Post by skydhash »

travisgriggs wrote: post #16
pixl97 wrote: post #4

Taking mechanical stuff apart and fixing it is one of these areas. One of the more recent ones I watched is taking apart large wenches on a bulldozer. There is a metal plate with two bolts on it you have to take off. If you don't know what you're doing you take both bolts out and it flies apart losing stuff because there is a spring behind the mechanism. If you know what you're doing you take out one bolt then put in…

I miss programming languages that fit this model. I remember learning how Dictionary/Map hashing by just putting d := Dictionary new. d at: 13 put: 42. d at: 5 put: 7. d at: 13 put: 57. in a workspace and hitting ‘debug it’. Modern programming ecosystems make this type of learn by discovery/exploration so much harder.

A lot of ecosystem eschew the debugger from their workflow. The best experience is with Common Lisp (slime) and Smalltalk, where you can inspect the variable from any snippet of code. It's quite nice too in IDEA (java) where you can put a breakpoint and investigate a suspicious behavior of a method.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#94

Post by skydhash »

beyarkay wrote: post #85
jeffrallen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, a novice is more ready to learn a lesson on the way back from a dead end than while barreling down towards it.

(author here) This is an interesting point. I hadn't considered it, but I agree. Or maybe to be more specific, I think the novice has some prior that their idea will work, and hearing an expert's disagreement will update their prior somewhat. If the novice has a high respect for the expert, that update will be large enough. But sometimes the novice just has to experience the pain firsthand in order to truly appreciat…

Advice while struggling is the key. I mentor a few friends, but if I'm giving directions, it is kept vague so that the task is still done by themselves. A proper review is only done after they tried or completed the tasks. This way, they already know the scope of the problem so the solution is way more understandable.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#95

Post by pixl97 »

joenot443 wrote: post #58
qiine wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

soOo how do you do it ? ;p

Well, the answer I love them to start with is asking if they're single-bay computers and if not, why they can't just turn off both machines and stick the HDDs in the same box :) It's also a great signal if they can follow this up by noting that the Windows drive is probably formatted in NTFS so the Linux instance will need drivers to support it. Otherwise, a wired network + SMB/Samba is a fine solution too, though mu…

>Otherwise, a wired network + SMB/Samba is a fine solution too, though much slower.

Robocopy with the MT flag speeds things up if it's lots of files.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#96

Post by beyarkay »

teodorlu wrote: post #55
beyarkay wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(author here) Apologies, I've (maybe mistakenly) put dead links for various essays that are works-in-progress, in order to figure out what to prioritize. I know it's annoying, but it does give me very good signal about what people want to read. For example, 2% of people clicked the essay `/hard`, but only 1% of people have clicked on the essay for `/expert_aesthetics`. So I'm frantically trying to finish `/hard` befo…

Not annoyed. But curious! I agree that mentoring is hard, and I want to read your take. I wonder if we agree on expert aesthetics or not. You write: > Experts tend to have an aesthetic preference towards technically challenging work rather than simple-but-interesting work, and I’ve written more about this phenomenon here: expert aesthetics. When I read the passage the first time, I thought you meant "experts prefer t…

> I agree that mentoring is hard, and I want to read your take.

Thanks for the vote of confidence (: I'm kicking myself for not figuring out a mailing list before this essay went viral, but I'll cross-post the essay on my substack (https://beyarkay.substack.com/) when it comes out, so you can sign up there to get an email.

> I wonder if we agree on expert aesthetics or not. You write:

So I'm coining "expert aesthetics" as a relatively unused phrase that I can put my own connotations onto. There'll be more in the essay (; but at a high level, I've observed that, as someone becomes an expert in a field, their sense for what's "beautiful" in that field changes, and _generally_ it starts to focus on things that are technically challenging. That is, experts (IME) tend to find technically difficult things _aesthetically_ beautiful, even though novices might not care one bit about the technical skill required.

Examples might help: Wine connoisseurs preferring wine from specific regions or made using specific techniques, while casual drinkers just want something that tastes good. Fashion designers preferring something that's different from last year and riffs off of the current styles, while the general public just want the same old same old. Painters taking delight in still lifes that perfectly capture the reflection of light through a wine glass, while most people just want a pretty sunset or portrait for their wall.

This is all still in flux, but that's the gist of what I'm calling "expert aesthetics".

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#97

Post by beyarkay »

gwern wrote: post #56
beyarkay wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(author here) Apologies, I've (maybe mistakenly) put dead links for various essays that are works-in-progress, in order to figure out what to prioritize. I know it's annoying, but it does give me very good signal about what people want to read. For example, 2% of people clicked the essay `/hard`, but only 1% of people have clicked on the essay for `/expert_aesthetics`. So I'm frantically trying to finish `/hard` befo…

> Work in progress (or 404) I think it would be a lot politer if the target page was clearer. As it is, I could be 'voting' on a draft or it could just be plain broken and the intended page somewhere else. Personally, I think it would make more sense to just put up what you have explicitly noted as drafts etc, and count the 'votes' that way.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm just using a static site generator so have limited flexibility, but I'll see what I can do to make it clear that something is a WIP vs a true 404.

PS: I love your writing, thank you so much for putting it out there (:

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#98

Post by pixl97 »

xlii wrote: post #22

I find the article interesting and well written. There might be some theory crafting but it resonates with my personal experience, especially this: > The expert’s intuition is often formidable, but rarely comprehensible. This inability to clearly explain their decisions is what makes it so useful for novices to spend time with experts. I really like spending time with novices, especially if they are truly interested…

>How one can fit 2 years of pain in a sentence, a paragraph or even day long story?

I like to call it thinking in compressed binary objects. It's like a bunch of concepts I execute without actually thinking about because I do them so often.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#99

Post by skydhash »

beyarkay wrote: post #87
elcritch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? No, those free form unguided interactions are very useful for most novices. They're not a replacement for more structured knowledge teansfer, but an important compliment. Sure some novices are just natural talents that can pick up complex material from structured content alone. They're few though. > The expert’s intuition is often formidable, but rarely comprehensible. This inability to clearly explain their de…

(author here) I love the graduate student + nobel laureate reference, I had read that study but totally forgot how relevant it is to the essay. Absolutely it hammers home the point that there's something about just spending casual time with experts in a field that's invaluable to novices, regardless of the skill/talent of the novice.

I'm reading a book that's partly inspired by academia settings and one thing that jumped to me is the papers vs lab interactions in learning. All the things that you need to know is already in the papers, but the link between the concepts is rarely explained and that's what gives you the solution for a given problem.

The MDN is a very comprehensive documentation for all things about programming a web application. But for a given task, the subset of docs you want and the link between them is not on MDN, it's found in the experience you have in dealing with similar things. And that's what you can give junior, the recipe for all the ingredients they need for a solution.

Letting them try first is for them to get to know the ingredients and kinda the general steps. By the time you tell them the recipes, they can just focus on the precise steps and measurements.

Re: Experts have it easy (2024)

#100

Post by skydhash »

lawn wrote: post #43
hindsightRegret wrote: post #32

One counterpoint I have to this article. Considering expert vs. novice problem-solving: Within their domain, experts leverage highly efficient models. Outside? Rigidity often impedes adaptation. Their ingrained patterns, assets in familiar territory, become cognitive liabilities in the unfamiliar. The novice's counter-intuitive strength lies in a lack of assumptions, fostering the openness to explore without ego.

I'd say this is an example of over-fitting, where the expert is too focused on their particular domain.

But sometimes, there's just not enough variance between the domains. Any NIH attitude is more likely to veer into complicated systems than finding the next best abstractions.
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