3 ms·

> On one hand, I understand that blaming the tool isn't a good attitude to have. On the other hand, my job consists in building tools for other professionals, a

> On one hand, I understand that blaming the tool isn't a good attitude to have. On the other hand, my job consists in building tools for other professionals, and I feel like I have way higher standards for the tools that I produce compared to the tools that I use. I think your view is of this is reasonably balanced. There is that element of someone without extensive experience not knowing what they don't know. Well, can we blame them for that? Thirty years ago, probably not. Today, I think the answer could be yes. A few days of time well spent web searching, reading and watching videos can bring someone from complete ignorance of a subject to having a very good starting point from which to grow. Today there's information on almost anything anyone might want to learn, free and widely available. What, generally speaking isn't widely present is the willingness and dedication to learn. I have friends my age who stopped learning twenty years ago, maybe even sooner. They just don't care enough. Or maybe they thought they were safe and did not need to. In at least one case I know, that was a huge mistake. He started life as a field service engineer with great prospects. He never bothered to learn anything new. Today he sits in a trailer at an oil field 24/7 manually logging various pressures and temperatures multiple times a day. I also blame the educational system for some of this. Maybe I was fortunate to have gone to school when I did. We started with assembler. Actually, machine language, raw 1's and 0's. By the time I learned C I had designed a few industrial control computers and fully coded them in assembler. The transition to C was very easy. And nobody had to tell me where the dangers were...because, coming from assembler, it was obvious.

Zababa 4y ago
That is a good point, we've never had so much information accessible. On the other hand, it's sometimes hard to know what actually matters. Maybe we (or I) don't know how to fully tap into its potential, but I still feel that I progress way faster when I can talk to someone that has experience. I can access their knowledge, but I can also start to see how they think, how they approach problems, how they solve them, what they value. I've also heard that for them, it can be valuable to have someone with a fresh outlook on things. You notice things that people got used to, and most of the time things make perfect sense considering the situation, but sometimes there's an opportunity to improve things for the better. You're right about learning, it's a lifelong process. I do think that doing this along other people helps. Sometimes working on something by yourself can be quite lonely, especially if the people around you are not that much into all of that. That kind of loops back into the discussion about tool. Blaming your environment is counterproductive, but it's still important to pick it carefully.

Zababa 4y ago

That is a good point, we've never had so much information accessible. On the other hand, it's sometimes hard to know what actually matters. Maybe we (or I) don't know how to fully tap into its potential, but I still feel that I progress way faster when I can talk to someone that has experience. I can access their knowledge, but I can also start to see how they think, how they approach problems, how they solve them, what they value. I've also heard that for them, it can be valuable to have someone with a fresh outlook on things. You notice things that people got used to, and most of the time things make perfect sense considering the situation, but sometimes there's an opportunity to improve things for the better. You're right about learning, it's a lifelong process. I do think that doing this along other people helps. Sometimes working on something by yourself can be quite lonely, especially if the people around you are not that much into all of that. That kind of loops back into the discussion about tool. Blaming your environment is counterproductive, but it's still important to pick it carefully.