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Everything seems trivial once you understand it. The author seems to be good at making people understand, so that it seems trivial afterwards. Knowing nothing

Everything seems trivial once you understand it. The author seems to be good at making people understand, so that it seems trivial afterwards. Knowing nothing about load balancers, had I read your summary before Rachels article, I would probably just glossed over it, but I would not have understood its profound importance for designing load balancers. Rachel's story kept me engaged and explained the problem in a way that I will surely remember a lot longer. Teaching is not about reciting facts -- that's what reference manuals are for. Teaching is for engaging students, making them interested, giving background on a topic, telling you why something matters, making it easy to understand, and making sure the student remembers the most important bits. It's something I have been struggling a lot with junior devs and interns. I show them what they are doing wrong, how to do it correctly, and the next day they make the same mistake again. If people were perfect logical machines, just telling them facts might be sufficient. Unfortunately people are people, and it's really really hard to teach them something effectively.

arkades 9y ago
I think the truth lies in the middle somewhere. I knew absolutely nothing about load balancing before reading OPs comment and the blog post, and while you’re correct that I wouldn’t have retained OPs bullet point version as well as Rachel’s, Rachel really went on at a length far beyond what was needed to tell the story / explain the concept (eg, the beach ball sized bag of bread). People need an intuitive concept and image to grasp and reason on while they master an idea, but that doesn’t justify any arbitrary amount of over-elaborating.
- mrmanner 9y ago
  I found that the (over)-elaboration made the article funnier to read. Since it's a Sunday, I wouldn't have read it if it was a boring, efficient, fact-crammed text reading like something from one of the more boring computer science classes I take. I did finish this though, and learned something on the way. So my point is: There are times when efficient and to the point is called for, and there are times when it's not.
tzs 9y ago
> Everything seems trivial once you understand it That has an interesting consequence with patents. In a patent infringement trial plaintiff is going to have to explain to the jury what the patent covers. But if plaintiff succeeds in getting the jury to understand the patent well enough to be able to realize that defendant infringed, there is a good chance they will understand the patent well enough to think that it was not non-obvious. The defendant also explains to the jury what the patent does, in order to explain their theory as to why they are not infringing.

arkades 9y ago

I think the truth lies in the middle somewhere. I knew absolutely nothing about load balancing before reading OPs comment and the blog post, and while you’re correct that I wouldn’t have retained OPs bullet point version as well as Rachel’s, Rachel really went on at a length far beyond what was needed to tell the story / explain the concept (eg, the beach ball sized bag of bread). People need an intuitive concept and image to grasp and reason on while they master an idea, but that doesn’t justify any arbitrary amount of over-elaborating.

mrmanner 9y ago
I found that the (over)-elaboration made the article funnier to read. Since it's a Sunday, I wouldn't have read it if it was a boring, efficient, fact-crammed text reading like something from one of the more boring computer science classes I take. I did finish this though, and learned something on the way. So my point is: There are times when efficient and to the point is called for, and there are times when it's not.

tzs 9y ago

> Everything seems trivial once you understand it That has an interesting consequence with patents. In a patent infringement trial plaintiff is going to have to explain to the jury what the patent covers. But if plaintiff succeeds in getting the jury to understand the patent well enough to be able to realize that defendant infringed, there is a good chance they will understand the patent well enough to think that it was not non-obvious. The defendant also explains to the jury what the patent does, in order to explain their theory as to why they are not infringing.