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Putting it another way, knowledge with the bare minimum experience required to be effective is very sharp, and that sharpness is sometimes what’s required to cu
by gen220 7y ago
Putting it another way, knowledge with the bare minimum experience required to be effective is very sharp, and that sharpness is sometimes what’s required to cut through old, retrospectively “wrong” ways of doing things. I don’t disagree with what you’ve said, I think we all have met plenty of people fitting your description, I just mean to say there’s another side of the coin. As food for thought, much (not all) of the open source software we herald as brilliant today was initially written by people still in or just barely out of grad school.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoThe New Grad had knowledge. The Senior Dev had Understanding. Understanding > Knowledge It's that simple.
- saagarjha 7y agoNot always.
- philipov 7y agoMore like, The New Grad has Ideals. The Senior Dev had Deadlines. Deadlines > Ideals.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoNot if you read the article. It's pretty clean the New Grad didn't understand the details, the scope of the problem. He was theoretically correct at 50k ft. In reality, the details made his theoretical irrelevant.
- jlgaddis 7y agoNot sure where it originated but I love this saying: > In theory, theory and reality are the same. > In reality, they're different.
- ptr 7y agoThe senior probably had both Knowledge and Understanding, and decided (correctly) in a split second which solution was good enough in all applicable dimensions, including the temporal (is it easy to change this if we have to?)
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 7y agoBeing pedantic here, but knowledge is equivalent to understanding (information being knowledge without understanding). Wisdom is the word you were looking for (knowledge being wisdom without experience): The New Grad had knowledge. The Senior Dev had Wisdom. Wisdom > Knowledge.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoI see it differently. Knowledge =/= understanding. There are plenty of ppl who know a lot but have little understanding. Put another way, knowledge is the nodes. Understanding is grasping the connections. Understanding is the higher power. Understanding is where the magic happens. Wisdom? Wisdom is next level understanding. It's the maturity of developing connection within the connections.
- gen220 7y agoI agree with the thrust, but I think this has two sides as well. Having an intricate understanding how things are connected, doesn't necessarily mean that one feels compelled to make it better. Sometimes, "understanding" actually begets a cynical form of apathy. The whole world is chaotic and full of holes and injustices, so why bother trying to do the right thing, if it won't make a difference in the "big picture"? Sometimes, knowledge (of your corner of the graph) with a hefty dose of misunderstanding (of the nodes and edges you're about to be traipsing down) is what's needed to most successfully face the challenges at hand. One name for this is "idealism", but without the negative connotation it is sometimes shipped in. This is more what I was getting at with the whole knowledge + inexperience bit, if this makes sense.