3 ms·

I dunno, it squares with my experience, at least until you reach a specialist. Admittedly this is anecdotal evidence, but ... I have diagnosed several medical

I dunno, it squares with my experience, at least until you reach a specialist. Admittedly this is anecdotal evidence, but ... I have diagnosed several medical issues with myself and my wife by web research, only to have to pay to go to a family doctor, who hems and haws, then gives a referral to a specialist, who agrees with what I have already stated. Specialists in my area will not take you in without a referral from the family doctor, so basically the family doctor is collecting a fee for being a gatekeeper, since he/she adds zero value. Something similar occurred many years ago with an eye problem I had (tear in retinal wall) - the regular eye doctor had me coming back week after week, collecting his fee each time, until I specifically asked for a referral. The specialist saw in 3 minutes, the tear that the doctor had missed from the beginning and on each subsequent visit - the reason - the specialist had me recline to flat on my back and used a very powerful magnifying glass, while the hack ^H^H^H^H regular doctor did not. The symptoms (large eye blockage in one eye due to large black cloudy thing that appeared one morning) clearly pointed to only this cause.

Locke1689 16y ago
Think about it this way: you want someone to design a website for you so you go off and find someone to do it. Now, you don't know how to program, don't really know anything about computers aside from how to perform a few functions (certainly nothing about how they actually work), and don't really have a professional frame of reference for evaluating the developers skill level. This is basically what you have to deal with with doctors. There are doctors who are very, very good and doctors who are just barely bright enough to continue to practice. The major problem is how you distinguish between the two or, in other terms, how do you find a good programmer if you don't really know anything about programming? Honestly, I don't have an easily cut-and-dried answer. I generally rely on my family (a large subset of my family are highly skilled physicians) to use their professional expertise and circles to find a very highly respected physician in the area. Similarly, I generally help in evaluating technical issues for them.

Locke1689 16y ago

Think about it this way: you want someone to design a website for you so you go off and find someone to do it. Now, you don't know how to program, don't really know anything about computers aside from how to perform a few functions (certainly nothing about how they actually work), and don't really have a professional frame of reference for evaluating the developers skill level. This is basically what you have to deal with with doctors. There are doctors who are very, very good and doctors who are just barely bright enough to continue to practice. The major problem is how you distinguish between the two or, in other terms, how do you find a good programmer if you don't really know anything about programming? Honestly, I don't have an easily cut-and-dried answer. I generally rely on my family (a large subset of my family are highly skilled physicians) to use their professional expertise and circles to find a very highly respected physician in the area. Similarly, I generally help in evaluating technical issues for them.