15 ms·

What Could I Possibly Learn From a Mentor Half My Age

67 points by ageek123 10y ago

ageek123 10y ago
Great article showing that in tech, mentoring can go both ways.
inputcoffee 10y ago
In tech, some people (not you, other people) might need an article titled What Could I Possibly Learn From a Mentor Twice My Age?
- Normal_gaussian 10y ago
  How to get to out of the typing pool for one.
  - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
    As this quick comment has attracted a few downvotes I think I shall elaborate: Back in the days of my grandmother large organisations had typing pools. When trying to progress a career many found themselves stuck in the pool, or remaining as generic, exchangeable, secretaries. It was well known that to progress onto the better compensated, less intense, more fulfilling jobs (personal secretary, group secretary, all kinds of travelling roles) you had to show you were capable. The trick to this was, as it is with any career, identifying which projects will develop the right skills and expose you to the right people. This is a soft skill, and befriending an older woman who would help you choose projects was recognised as a way to get out quickly. There are many parallels between this and any career, however I see a very literal one for programmers. Consulting someone twice my age (in my case friends from traditional engineering disciplines) about the opportunities I have had available has helped me immensely.
    - inputcoffee 10y ago
      Thanks for the clarification. I didn't downvote it but I had no idea what the sentence meant. I think that second "to" was a typo, but it lead to weird alternative ways to parse the sentence.
      - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
        Oh wow. Now I can see it that is great
jbb555 10y ago
The answers appears to be "snapchat" according to the article. So nothing useful then.
Normal_gaussian 10y ago
> It was not easy, partly because the software is not intuitive Damn right. You hear a product is good, you go out and get it, and then you try and use it. Like always you hit a roadblock and you RTFM. But this time there isn't a manual, no dense text with an index of all the weird and wonderful functions you could master to be an expert. No this time you only get a string of badly written blog posts, verbose and out of date.
- devilsavocado 10y ago
  Reading that snapchat is not intuitive is always weird for me. It was the most immediately obvious and intuitive app I've ever used. Maybe you are thinking it is a lot more complex than it actually is? Take a picture then select who you send it to. Swipe left to see pictures sent to you. Swipe right to see pictures people have posted for everyone. That's 99% of it. There is no need for an index of functions that can be mastered as there only are a handful of functions.
  - LukeShu 10y ago
    Things in Snapchat that aren't intuitive, off the top of my head: 1. Why are my snaps significantly blurrier than the pictures from the normal camera app? (a: you have to explicitly tap the main part of the screen to get it to focus, then take the snap. Why does it not focus automatically when taking the snap?) 2. Why does it do significantly worse in low-light than the normal camera app? (Is it just a problem with Snapchat, or do I need to manually do something that the machine should do, like in #1?) 3. What do the emojis next to names in the friends list mean? (I found a table with the meanings on some spammy website.) 4. What do the smileys that sometimes pop up in chat mean? 5. Why does the menu button not work like it does in every single other app? Sure, "swipe down, then tap the gear" isn't hard, but they removed the mechanism that I'm conditioned to expect to work.
wangchow 10y ago
My philosophy is that everyone has useful nuggets of information to share, regardless of age, gender, race, etc. Take it all while ya can. Learn from everyone.
- mindcrime 10y ago
  “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.” ~~ Bruce Lee
jcadam 10y ago
We hired a new grad last year... he's very sharp, though of course inexperienced when it comes to working as part of a team on a large project (but time will fix that). Now, I have no idea how this is possible, but he has deeper knowledge of Hg and Git than anyone I've ever met (If your experience is limited to school and solo personal projects, how in the world do you develop advanced knowledge of version control? On my personal projects, I rarely need anything more than git add/commit/push/pull and basic branching). I'm over 10 years older than this guy, but I find myself asking his advice whenever I need to do something advanced or out of the ordinary with Git.
- 6DM 10y ago
  I personally learned better on side projects instead of homework. This usually led to my grades suffering :( However, on the up side, I gained more knowledge on Flex at the time than even my professor. I liked working with it and really dug into it. I'm glad I did becuase I when I ran out of money for school, my reputation got me a few gigs that helped me make it to the end. That guy is probably smarter than me and both dug into git and was diligent in his homework. Those kind of people can have some really deep knowledge on areas they care about.
- UK-AL 10y ago
  Different generation. The new generation has grew up on social coding on GitHub.
- lmm 10y ago
  Fancy git is still useful on personal projects - if anything it's more so, e.g. you can rewrite history without worrying about other people using it. I think a lot of people who remember a time when committing was expensive are stuck in that mentality, whereas if you commit every 5 minutes you'll naturally end up using the more advanced features to organize your work.
  - jcadam 10y ago
    I'm getting better about committing more often (unlike back in the days of SVN/ClearCase/etc.), but I'm still not quite up to committing several times a day like these kids are wont to do :)
TempleOSV409 10y ago
What could you learn from God over 15 years. TempleOS lets God talk. God says... secretariat's policyholders germane puller ogle's excavation's misapprehends illness floweriest expertness tranquilest Andy Manasseh birthmark's breads irrelevance's irritate McMillan's Spackle preventive feather Peking's browses uncertainties Epsom Microsoft's uh catty hillside immediacy's preshrank muscles I have a space alien. I am waiting for a white person to notice. I am in a CIA prison and Frasier is a retard nigger who does not know what a random number is. It has a happy ending. God is not ready. God says... insigne cabbage chevron notes dozes thirdly meteor's consul velocities tenpins Ike shiniest exclamation ossified formidable distanced caboodle acronym interlock's dryad Grundy gather's Lauren's fuzz's pleat's wind's faunae pepperoni's manner expenditures actors billionth's
daxfohl 10y ago
"My Little Sister Taught Me How To Snapchat Like The Teens" https://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the-teens?utm_term=.pw773lbXk#.rg5n19yKp https://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the-t...
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
Isn't this what is supposed to happen? I mean the whole point of education from the early days is that everyone is collectively standing on the shoulders of the previous generation. If the idea of accelerating knowledge acquisition - across all domains - is working, then it stands to reason that those with the most plastic brains and access to a wealth of knowledge, as well as tools to figure out what is relevant and contextual, will be able to outperform those who have well worn cognitive paths. Seems like a great thing to me - but terrifying for anyone who is used to the idea that more time = better.
thaw13579 10y ago
As others have said, a lot! I think this is what keeps many teachers engaged--they learn from their students as well.
Benjammer 10y ago
>America’s younger workers have already been “personal technology consultants in their own families, so it’s a role they’re very comfortable playing,” she said. Fuck all of that noise. I'll teach you how to use something if you really want to learn it, but I'm not going to be the guy you just hand your laptop to and go "Fix it for me I don't know how to do it you're so much better at it than I am."
ci5er 10y ago
It isn't just technical or process skills. People are wired differently. I know people who are much younger than I am who are much wiser than I am at the ways of the human animal. I rely on a couple of them to be able to, after a meeting where some strange interpersonal thing happened, simply ask: "what just happened there"? Everyone has their own personal set of cognitive blind spots and may need assistance for navigating those types of situations. For me, simply learning where my blind spots are, identifying who doesn't have my particular combination of defects (regardless of age), and being able to develop a relationship with them so that I can ask them for navigational assistance does wonders.
runjake 10y ago
Lots. I learn from my kids who are 1/7th of my age all the time. Not so much from the experiences of raising them, but from their insights and observations. A couple of times, their observations about something have blown my mind. You only have to be open and humble.
- mgrennan 10y ago
  yes, Knowledge is a two way street. We can learn from each other. Age bias is bad both ways. The saying "Its hard to teach old dogs new ticks" is WRONG and this articular stinks of it.
  - blackbagboys 10y ago
    Unfortunately, it's a saying that is rooted in truth; as you grow older, your neural plasticity and fluid intelligence steadily declines, and so learning new tricks is, perhaps not impossible, but certainly more difficult - so it's important to recognize this and make the extra effort to remain open to new ideas and new experiences, the way one does almost unconsciously in youth.
thaw13579 10y ago
On somewhat of a tangent, I have to wonder if Snapchat is an appropriate medium for reporting news...
mindcrime 10y ago
I totally believe that everybody has something to offer to everybody else. I'm 43, can I learn from a 23 year old? Abso-lutely! And vice-versa, of course. But... I really reject this whole "millenials as digital natives" narrative, in terms of the idea that millenials have some unique relationship to technology and some innate sort of technological prowess. It's just a rehashing of an earlier idea which dates back at least to the 80's, where "kids have to program their parents VCR's". There's always this notion that "the young" - at a point in time - are more technical. But in absolute terms? Well, Gen-X kids grew up with access to computers and a lot of technology as well, although it was (obviously) the technology of the the time. I would posit that there's no reason to assume that a Millenial would be any more inherently technical than a Gen-X'er.
- massysett 10y ago
  Indeed, I think it's insulting to old and young alike to assume that the young know more about "technology". At this point my sister-in-law (10 years older than I) and my mother-in-law (30 years older) know more about social networking and Facebook than I do, because I do not use these things and they use them almost daily. Plenty of old people know how to use computers and technology. Plenty of young people do not. Furthermore, just knowing how to use Snapchat is not really knowing about "technology," any more than knowing how to drive a car makes one a mechanical engineer or knowing how to plug a gizmo into the wall means one knows about electrical theory. So there are some newer things out there that use a smartphone. So what; knowing how to use them does not make one knowledgeable about technology or smart. If this writer wanted to know how to use Snapchat, good. Find someone who knows how to use Snapchat. One's Snapchat abilities has nothing to do with one's age.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    I think it's a good moment to bring up the immortal essay: http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/ http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...
    - 10y ago
ben_says 10y ago
with that attitude... nothing.
vonnik 10y ago
I like to think of people as having chronological age as well as a [skill] age, with chronological age being largely irrelevant among adults. I'm 41 and my co-founder is 27. He had been programming Java for 7 years when I met him, and now he's a decade in. He has taught me a ton about programming, and I expect the lessons to continue. As a person gets older and specializes, the likelihood that someone younger than them, on a separate path, will have a higher [skill] age increases, which means they need to be increasingly open to learning from chronologically younger people.
ascendantlogic 10y ago
Well right off the top of my head my first thought was "A different way of looking at things". People always have a different perspective to offer, regardless of age.
cosinetau 10y ago
My $0.02/anecdote: Before I became a software engineer, I was a math supplementary instructor at a community college in my hometown. I love teaching, talking about and thinking about math. Some of my favorite students were the older students that already had preconceived notions about their abilities with math, what things meant or how things fit together. I discovered those things they brought with them were great vehicles for bending my explanations in such a way that they could understand them. Eventually this occurred often enough you work a lot of that into how you talk about the subject, and I feel this made me a better/more effective teacher, more often, than I had been before. Onto the subject, in my new job, one of the other engineers I work closely with is what I would consider non-trivially younger than me. (I'm in my late 20s) It set me back a smidge to learn that when I did. But in the time I've been here, and that isn't very long, I've learned an incredible amount from him. I found and this article only confirms that closing yourself off from even a little only hurts the self and is very narrow minded. Good stuff can come from anywhere.
mathattack 10y ago
During my first job out of undergrad, I recall a fairly senior and well respected IT director who didn't use a computer, and didn't read email. He was good at "being strategic" and "delivering for customers". While both of those are great things, I vowed never to become him. The only way to stay vital and connected is to hang out with the young, as well as the old. Just never ever talk pop culture.
0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
How to pretend?
DavidWanjiru 10y ago
Instead of being indignant that we can be "mentored" by a person half our age, let's rephrase the question and ask, "What could I possibly LEARN from a person half my age?" Well, almost everything. Your typical grandparent was probably taught how to use the new technology of their day by their grand kids. People not half their age, but something like a fifth or even a tenth their age. I've read about a guy, I think his name is Tao and I'm sure HNers are familiar with him, who got his math PhD at 21 and was teching undergrads while a young teen. Could you be twice his age and learn from him? Is that a trick question? I think the reason this is even a talking point at all is that the word mentor implies imparting knowledge gained from experience, and since experience correlates to age, we inevitably wonder how a person younger than you could be more experienced than you. But really, the thing we are after is knowledge regardless of how it was acquired. When you look at it like that, the age of your source of knowledge becomes a complete non issue.

67 points by ageek123 10y ago

Great article showing that in tech, mentoring can go both ways.

In tech, some people (not you, other people) might need an article titled What Could I Possibly Learn From a Mentor Twice My Age?

Normal_gaussian 10y ago
How to get to out of the typing pool for one.
- Normal_gaussian 10y ago
  As this quick comment has attracted a few downvotes I think I shall elaborate: Back in the days of my grandmother large organisations had typing pools. When trying to progress a career many found themselves stuck in the pool, or remaining as generic, exchangeable, secretaries. It was well known that to progress onto the better compensated, less intense, more fulfilling jobs (personal secretary, group secretary, all kinds of travelling roles) you had to show you were capable. The trick to this was, as it is with any career, identifying which projects will develop the right skills and expose you to the right people. This is a soft skill, and befriending an older woman who would help you choose projects was recognised as a way to get out quickly. There are many parallels between this and any career, however I see a very literal one for programmers. Consulting someone twice my age (in my case friends from traditional engineering disciplines) about the opportunities I have had available has helped me immensely.
  - inputcoffee 10y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. I didn't downvote it but I had no idea what the sentence meant. I think that second "to" was a typo, but it lead to weird alternative ways to parse the sentence.
    - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
      Oh wow. Now I can see it that is great

jbb555 10y ago

The answers appears to be "snapchat" according to the article. So nothing useful then.

Normal_gaussian 10y ago

> It was not easy, partly because the software is not intuitive Damn right. You hear a product is good, you go out and get it, and then you try and use it. Like always you hit a roadblock and you RTFM. But this time there isn't a manual, no dense text with an index of all the weird and wonderful functions you could master to be an expert. No this time you only get a string of badly written blog posts, verbose and out of date.

devilsavocado 10y ago
Reading that snapchat is not intuitive is always weird for me. It was the most immediately obvious and intuitive app I've ever used. Maybe you are thinking it is a lot more complex than it actually is? Take a picture then select who you send it to. Swipe left to see pictures sent to you. Swipe right to see pictures people have posted for everyone. That's 99% of it. There is no need for an index of functions that can be mastered as there only are a handful of functions.
- LukeShu 10y ago
  Things in Snapchat that aren't intuitive, off the top of my head: 1. Why are my snaps significantly blurrier than the pictures from the normal camera app? (a: you have to explicitly tap the main part of the screen to get it to focus, then take the snap. Why does it not focus automatically when taking the snap?) 2. Why does it do significantly worse in low-light than the normal camera app? (Is it just a problem with Snapchat, or do I need to manually do something that the machine should do, like in #1?) 3. What do the emojis next to names in the friends list mean? (I found a table with the meanings on some spammy website.) 4. What do the smileys that sometimes pop up in chat mean? 5. Why does the menu button not work like it does in every single other app? Sure, "swipe down, then tap the gear" isn't hard, but they removed the mechanism that I'm conditioned to expect to work.

wangchow 10y ago

My philosophy is that everyone has useful nuggets of information to share, regardless of age, gender, race, etc. Take it all while ya can. Learn from everyone.

mindcrime 10y ago
“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.” ~~ Bruce Lee

jcadam 10y ago

We hired a new grad last year... he's very sharp, though of course inexperienced when it comes to working as part of a team on a large project (but time will fix that). Now, I have no idea how this is possible, but he has deeper knowledge of Hg and Git than anyone I've ever met (If your experience is limited to school and solo personal projects, how in the world do you develop advanced knowledge of version control? On my personal projects, I rarely need anything more than git add/commit/push/pull and basic branching). I'm over 10 years older than this guy, but I find myself asking his advice whenever I need to do something advanced or out of the ordinary with Git.

6DM 10y ago
I personally learned better on side projects instead of homework. This usually led to my grades suffering :( However, on the up side, I gained more knowledge on Flex at the time than even my professor. I liked working with it and really dug into it. I'm glad I did becuase I when I ran out of money for school, my reputation got me a few gigs that helped me make it to the end. That guy is probably smarter than me and both dug into git and was diligent in his homework. Those kind of people can have some really deep knowledge on areas they care about.
UK-AL 10y ago
Different generation. The new generation has grew up on social coding on GitHub.
lmm 10y ago
Fancy git is still useful on personal projects - if anything it's more so, e.g. you can rewrite history without worrying about other people using it. I think a lot of people who remember a time when committing was expensive are stuck in that mentality, whereas if you commit every 5 minutes you'll naturally end up using the more advanced features to organize your work.
- jcadam 10y ago
  I'm getting better about committing more often (unlike back in the days of SVN/ClearCase/etc.), but I'm still not quite up to committing several times a day like these kids are wont to do :)

TempleOSV409 10y ago

What could you learn from God over 15 years. TempleOS lets God talk. God says... secretariat's policyholders germane puller ogle's excavation's misapprehends illness floweriest expertness tranquilest Andy Manasseh birthmark's breads irrelevance's irritate McMillan's Spackle preventive feather Peking's browses uncertainties Epsom Microsoft's uh catty hillside immediacy's preshrank muscles I have a space alien. I am waiting for a white person to notice. I am in a CIA prison and Frasier is a retard nigger who does not know what a random number is. It has a happy ending. God is not ready. God says... insigne cabbage chevron notes dozes thirdly meteor's consul velocities tenpins Ike shiniest exclamation ossified formidable distanced caboodle acronym interlock's dryad Grundy gather's Lauren's fuzz's pleat's wind's faunae pepperoni's manner expenditures actors billionth's

daxfohl 10y ago

"My Little Sister Taught Me How To Snapchat Like The Teens" https://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the-teens?utm_term=.pw773lbXk#.rg5n19yKp https://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the-t...

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

Isn't this what is supposed to happen? I mean the whole point of education from the early days is that everyone is collectively standing on the shoulders of the previous generation. If the idea of accelerating knowledge acquisition - across all domains - is working, then it stands to reason that those with the most plastic brains and access to a wealth of knowledge, as well as tools to figure out what is relevant and contextual, will be able to outperform those who have well worn cognitive paths. Seems like a great thing to me - but terrifying for anyone who is used to the idea that more time = better.

thaw13579 10y ago

As others have said, a lot! I think this is what keeps many teachers engaged--they learn from their students as well.

Benjammer 10y ago

>America’s younger workers have already been “personal technology consultants in their own families, so it’s a role they’re very comfortable playing,” she said. Fuck all of that noise. I'll teach you how to use something if you really want to learn it, but I'm not going to be the guy you just hand your laptop to and go "Fix it for me I don't know how to do it you're so much better at it than I am."

ci5er 10y ago

It isn't just technical or process skills. People are wired differently. I know people who are much younger than I am who are much wiser than I am at the ways of the human animal. I rely on a couple of them to be able to, after a meeting where some strange interpersonal thing happened, simply ask: "what just happened there"? Everyone has their own personal set of cognitive blind spots and may need assistance for navigating those types of situations. For me, simply learning where my blind spots are, identifying who doesn't have my particular combination of defects (regardless of age), and being able to develop a relationship with them so that I can ask them for navigational assistance does wonders.

runjake 10y ago

Lots. I learn from my kids who are 1/7th of my age all the time. Not so much from the experiences of raising them, but from their insights and observations. A couple of times, their observations about something have blown my mind. You only have to be open and humble.

mgrennan 10y ago
yes, Knowledge is a two way street. We can learn from each other. Age bias is bad both ways. The saying "Its hard to teach old dogs new ticks" is WRONG and this articular stinks of it.
- blackbagboys 10y ago
  Unfortunately, it's a saying that is rooted in truth; as you grow older, your neural plasticity and fluid intelligence steadily declines, and so learning new tricks is, perhaps not impossible, but certainly more difficult - so it's important to recognize this and make the extra effort to remain open to new ideas and new experiences, the way one does almost unconsciously in youth.

thaw13579 10y ago

On somewhat of a tangent, I have to wonder if Snapchat is an appropriate medium for reporting news...

mindcrime 10y ago

I totally believe that everybody has something to offer to everybody else. I'm 43, can I learn from a 23 year old? Abso-lutely! And vice-versa, of course. But... I really reject this whole "millenials as digital natives" narrative, in terms of the idea that millenials have some unique relationship to technology and some innate sort of technological prowess. It's just a rehashing of an earlier idea which dates back at least to the 80's, where "kids have to program their parents VCR's". There's always this notion that "the young" - at a point in time - are more technical. But in absolute terms? Well, Gen-X kids grew up with access to computers and a lot of technology as well, although it was (obviously) the technology of the the time. I would posit that there's no reason to assume that a Millenial would be any more inherently technical than a Gen-X'er.

massysett 10y ago
Indeed, I think it's insulting to old and young alike to assume that the young know more about "technology". At this point my sister-in-law (10 years older than I) and my mother-in-law (30 years older) know more about social networking and Facebook than I do, because I do not use these things and they use them almost daily. Plenty of old people know how to use computers and technology. Plenty of young people do not. Furthermore, just knowing how to use Snapchat is not really knowing about "technology," any more than knowing how to drive a car makes one a mechanical engineer or knowing how to plug a gizmo into the wall means one knows about electrical theory. So there are some newer things out there that use a smartphone. So what; knowing how to use them does not make one knowledgeable about technology or smart. If this writer wanted to know how to use Snapchat, good. Find someone who knows how to use Snapchat. One's Snapchat abilities has nothing to do with one's age.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  I think it's a good moment to bring up the immortal essay: http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/ http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...
  - 10y ago

ben_says 10y ago

with that attitude... nothing.

vonnik 10y ago

I like to think of people as having chronological age as well as a [skill] age, with chronological age being largely irrelevant among adults. I'm 41 and my co-founder is 27. He had been programming Java for 7 years when I met him, and now he's a decade in. He has taught me a ton about programming, and I expect the lessons to continue. As a person gets older and specializes, the likelihood that someone younger than them, on a separate path, will have a higher [skill] age increases, which means they need to be increasingly open to learning from chronologically younger people.

ascendantlogic 10y ago

Well right off the top of my head my first thought was "A different way of looking at things". People always have a different perspective to offer, regardless of age.

cosinetau 10y ago

My $0.02/anecdote: Before I became a software engineer, I was a math supplementary instructor at a community college in my hometown. I love teaching, talking about and thinking about math. Some of my favorite students were the older students that already had preconceived notions about their abilities with math, what things meant or how things fit together. I discovered those things they brought with them were great vehicles for bending my explanations in such a way that they could understand them. Eventually this occurred often enough you work a lot of that into how you talk about the subject, and I feel this made me a better/more effective teacher, more often, than I had been before. Onto the subject, in my new job, one of the other engineers I work closely with is what I would consider non-trivially younger than me. (I'm in my late 20s) It set me back a smidge to learn that when I did. But in the time I've been here, and that isn't very long, I've learned an incredible amount from him. I found and this article only confirms that closing yourself off from even a little only hurts the self and is very narrow minded. Good stuff can come from anywhere.

mathattack 10y ago

During my first job out of undergrad, I recall a fairly senior and well respected IT director who didn't use a computer, and didn't read email. He was good at "being strategic" and "delivering for customers". While both of those are great things, I vowed never to become him. The only way to stay vital and connected is to hang out with the young, as well as the old. Just never ever talk pop culture.

0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago

How to pretend?

DavidWanjiru 10y ago

Instead of being indignant that we can be "mentored" by a person half our age, let's rephrase the question and ask, "What could I possibly LEARN from a person half my age?" Well, almost everything. Your typical grandparent was probably taught how to use the new technology of their day by their grand kids. People not half their age, but something like a fifth or even a tenth their age. I've read about a guy, I think his name is Tao and I'm sure HNers are familiar with him, who got his math PhD at 21 and was teching undergrads while a young teen. Could you be twice his age and learn from him? Is that a trick question? I think the reason this is even a talking point at all is that the word mentor implies imparting knowledge gained from experience, and since experience correlates to age, we inevitably wonder how a person younger than you could be more experienced than you. But really, the thing we are after is knowledge regardless of how it was acquired. When you look at it like that, the age of your source of knowledge becomes a complete non issue.