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> With experience it should become rarer and rarer to encounter some things that makes so little sense that you feel like a noob, and you certainly shouldn't fe

> With experience it should become rarer and rarer to encounter some things that makes so little sense that you feel like a noob, and you certainly shouldn't feel aimless. Then you're not pushing yourself or trying new things. Noob == newbie, so it applies even to experts who are learning things in an unfamiliar area. I felt like a noob when I learned about functional programming. Then I felt like a noob again when I started learning Haskell. I read about Coq yesterday and felt like a total and utter noob. I read about the `nom` lexing crate for Rust recently and felt like a noob getting up to speed. I still am a noob when it comes to using every unix utility: I recently learned about gnu parallel and read about xargs more finely. I never want to be in a situation where I never feel like a noob, because in computing alone that's basically impossible unless I'm not challenging myself.

GistNoesis 7y ago
I agree that you want to attempt things that may fail to challenge yourself. But rewarding libraries (by using them) that make you feel like a noob is kind of rewarding an abusive behavior. Before you use something you probably should already have a good model of how it operates from a high level perspective, what you need to give them, why you are using them... The software should serve your need instead of forcing you to adapt conventions. If you invest time learning a bad software then the sunk cost fallacy will make you keep using the bad software and sunk-in more time. Exploring is hard, you should have a strategy for it, you should explore things in the right order so that exploring is easy, and you explore what you want. If your exploring strategy is to follow the steepest learning curve you will get lost in an infinite hellish mess like Sisyphus.
- andrewzah 7y ago
  Nowhere did I state that I had to use any such libraries. The only reason I started learning nom, is because I received multiple recommendations to check it out. Regardless if I use it or not, it still was a fun learning experience.
bonoboTP 7y ago
I interpreted the post much more broadly, way beyond software tools. There are tons of things in existence outside of computers, and each of us is a noob in most things. Just some examples that come to mind: Playing musical instruments and singing, yoga poses, barbell training with correct form, Buddhism, how to negotiate in an Arab bazaar, tax returns, training animals, riding a motorcycle, how to navigate forests, how to navigate the sea on a sailboat, how to direct and edit a movie, reciting poems, how to structure a novel, cooking and baking well, brewing beer, how the electric wiring works in a house, hobby electronics, how to build furniture, how to shoot guns and how they work, self defense and martial arts, fixing a car, hunting and fishing, BDSM and fetishes, finance products and the stock market, law and the court system in various countries, foreign languages, diet and nutrition, amateur radio, physics, painting, calligraphy, psychedelic drugs, networking effectively with important people, being a bartender or other service personnel, backpacking alone, raising children... Some may say "I may not have much practice in [particular thing], but surely it's easy, it's just [...]", but I really recommend reading that blog post called "Reality has a surprising amount of detail", which shows how many things there are to learn about simple sounding special cases (like building a staircase). All these things and hundreds more are rabbit holes with more and more branches of rabbit holes of communities, cultures, various levels of expertise attainable in each branch and subbranch etc.
- andrewzah 7y ago
  Of course. In this case I specifically applied it to my professional domain, but this advice applies to every single facet of life. Life is also incredibly boring if you're not challenging yourself to do new things. Which is why I force myself to try new hobbies, events, programming languages. I almost always walk away glad that I pushed myself to expand and grow, even if I end up not enjoying or pursuing that thing.

GistNoesis 7y ago

I agree that you want to attempt things that may fail to challenge yourself. But rewarding libraries (by using them) that make you feel like a noob is kind of rewarding an abusive behavior. Before you use something you probably should already have a good model of how it operates from a high level perspective, what you need to give them, why you are using them... The software should serve your need instead of forcing you to adapt conventions. If you invest time learning a bad software then the sunk cost fallacy will make you keep using the bad software and sunk-in more time. Exploring is hard, you should have a strategy for it, you should explore things in the right order so that exploring is easy, and you explore what you want. If your exploring strategy is to follow the steepest learning curve you will get lost in an infinite hellish mess like Sisyphus.

andrewzah 7y ago
Nowhere did I state that I had to use any such libraries. The only reason I started learning nom, is because I received multiple recommendations to check it out. Regardless if I use it or not, it still was a fun learning experience.

bonoboTP 7y ago

I interpreted the post much more broadly, way beyond software tools. There are tons of things in existence outside of computers, and each of us is a noob in most things. Just some examples that come to mind: Playing musical instruments and singing, yoga poses, barbell training with correct form, Buddhism, how to negotiate in an Arab bazaar, tax returns, training animals, riding a motorcycle, how to navigate forests, how to navigate the sea on a sailboat, how to direct and edit a movie, reciting poems, how to structure a novel, cooking and baking well, brewing beer, how the electric wiring works in a house, hobby electronics, how to build furniture, how to shoot guns and how they work, self defense and martial arts, fixing a car, hunting and fishing, BDSM and fetishes, finance products and the stock market, law and the court system in various countries, foreign languages, diet and nutrition, amateur radio, physics, painting, calligraphy, psychedelic drugs, networking effectively with important people, being a bartender or other service personnel, backpacking alone, raising children... Some may say "I may not have much practice in [particular thing], but surely it's easy, it's just [...]", but I really recommend reading that blog post called "Reality has a surprising amount of detail", which shows how many things there are to learn about simple sounding special cases (like building a staircase). All these things and hundreds more are rabbit holes with more and more branches of rabbit holes of communities, cultures, various levels of expertise attainable in each branch and subbranch etc.

andrewzah 7y ago
Of course. In this case I specifically applied it to my professional domain, but this advice applies to every single facet of life. Life is also incredibly boring if you're not challenging yourself to do new things. Which is why I force myself to try new hobbies, events, programming languages. I almost always walk away glad that I pushed myself to expand and grow, even if I end up not enjoying or pursuing that thing.