4 ms·

Hey szany, thanks for the feedback, I can totally understand where you are coming from. That's interesting and I totally agree, talking as if you know all abou

by LeonW 15y ago

Hey szany, thanks for the feedback, I can totally understand where you are coming from. That's interesting and I totally agree, talking as if you know all about the subject can certainly do more harm than good. What I tried to focus on with this post, is to see everything you do somewhat like an MVP. The key is to keep getting feedback on everything you do and shipping stuff as soon as you have a slight grasp of the situation. I didn't mean to pretend you are an expert but to be content with the amount you have learnt and sharing it immediately to learn more faster. Does that make sense?

spacemanaki 15y ago
I had a similar reaction as szany. I think part of the problem is that your post has an really shallow example: knowledge of bars and restaurants in Hong Kong. That's not a topic that would ever require very deep study. There are a range of subjects which really do require deep study before you should be spouting off on them, for instance: compilers. I've got stacks of books on compilers and have spent a decent amount of time studying the details of Lisp implementation, and I'm not sure there's much to be gained from sharing what I know. I would just be regurgitating what I've read in books which present the topic better than I could, so I don't think it would be beneficial, unless I were to specifically seek out feedback from experts, but that's not what you're talking about it seems. I just think there are shades of gray here and your post might have benefited from some more specific examples rather than presenting the idea that we are in general "smarter" than we think we are. I find it humbling and inspiring to realize how much "smarts" I lack and how much I have to learn, when it comes to deeply technical subjects.
- tedkalaw 15y ago
  I guess that Leo's post resonated with me because I find that the sharing of what I've learned so far helps me learn it better - and sometimes, there are people who are in the same boat as you before you came to some realization. That is to say, sometimes I get stuck on something that should probably be easy - and when I find the crux, the thing that got me unstuck, sharing that is beneficial to people who are stuck in the same way. We all think and learn differently, so if there's just one other person out there who thinks the same way as me and might find things easier with the same realization I had...well, I think it's worth it.
  - pbjorklund 15y ago
    The act of sharing also requires you to evaluate what you know . It is through the act of teaching that we can be more certain that we have truly learnt. I myself often think that I know something, but when I try to explain it to someone I often find nuances that I hadn't considered yet. I don't think Leo is talking about giving the keynote adress at some GCC symposium but rather sharing with the intent of gathering feedback as to gain further insight into the subject. It's not so much about training someone as it is about growing knowledge together.
- larve 15y ago
  TL;DR: Go deep, but make a map. I would think that complicated topics like compiler construction or LISP implementation actually benefit from deep knowledge and understanding. There are a few topics where I feel like I have achieved some kind of mastery, and it comes with a) the knowledge that I actually know nothing about the subject itself b) a kind of uncanny "wisdom" about where to look for problems, further reference c) the ability to explain the topic in terms of very simple concepts and examples, while still being able to answer most questions. A concrete example I like to give about this is: I've been programming with all my heart for 18 years, 8 hours a day. Yet I still feel as dumb in front of a for loop for fear of making an off by one as in the first days. What I am able to do now however is know where the dragon lays, double check it, write some tests around it, and being able to pinpoint the problematic for loop in the complete program in a "usually" pretty short time. Or being able to look at the compiler part responsible when it's actually the compiler making the off by one. Or checking how threadsafe the whole thing is. If that doesn't work I could still rewrite the whole thing in a recursive fashion. Or asynchronously with a state machine. And sometimes I'm just a moron and I made a stupid mistake and took 5 hours to find it, and feel as much as a newbie as I did when I was 13. For example, once you know "everything" about compiler construction: LALR parsing, AST construction, register allocation, SSA trees, static analysis, written a few compilers for your own usage, extended existing ones, wrote a few backends for LLVM, created a language of your own with some following on the internet, you realize you know nothing. You don't know how register allocation works on an IA64, or maybe you have no grasp anymore about how register banks work on modern CPU cores, or maybe you have no idea about how a JIT on ARM would work, and that's just register allocation. You know that you've given it a really serious try, but there is just no way that you actually know anything about compilers. However, you are able to explain what a compiler does to a layman in simple terms, transforming a formula with multiplications into a formula without multiplications. You are able to explain what a compiler does to a beginning programmer by actually implementing one right in front of her, in 80 lines of python. And you are actually able to answer her questions, which can be extremely difficult questions, while being able to gauge the complexity of the answer and tailor fit it. That's why I think that deep knowledge is very valuable. What I find very important to write down (and maybe communicate to others, I don't know) is the steps you are taking while learning a topic, the resources you are reading, the conversations you have. I learnt a few artistic fields in the last years, where practice as a physical and mental activity is there to engrain an intuitive understanding of the topic in your soul. In drawing and in music, it's more through practice than through thinking that I acquire new concepts. I play and focus and draw and do some exercises or copy some of the masters, and one day I wake up and I somehow know it's there. And the way and practice and exercises that led to that insight are very easy to forget. It's very easy to forget that it's probably from copying this one painting over and over that I suddenly understood how to render wood. The only way to communicate that kind of knowledge to other people is to have a whip and tell them "copy that painting 5 times over, then you'll understand" because it is so incredibly hard to fit that knowledge into words. The process is probably slightly the same for more "left brain" activities, but it's easier to be rational about the way to go about it. Still, I now try to write down which book, which exercise and which program I did, in the hope of one day tracing down how some of my "expert" traits came to be.
szany 15y ago
I think the right attitude is to have enough humility to ask questions, not to assume enough expertise to give answers.

by LeonW 15y ago

spacemanaki 15y ago

I had a similar reaction as szany. I think part of the problem is that your post has an really shallow example: knowledge of bars and restaurants in Hong Kong. That's not a topic that would ever require very deep study. There are a range of subjects which really do require deep study before you should be spouting off on them, for instance: compilers. I've got stacks of books on compilers and have spent a decent amount of time studying the details of Lisp implementation, and I'm not sure there's much to be gained from sharing what I know. I would just be regurgitating what I've read in books which present the topic better than I could, so I don't think it would be beneficial, unless I were to specifically seek out feedback from experts, but that's not what you're talking about it seems. I just think there are shades of gray here and your post might have benefited from some more specific examples rather than presenting the idea that we are in general "smarter" than we think we are. I find it humbling and inspiring to realize how much "smarts" I lack and how much I have to learn, when it comes to deeply technical subjects.

tedkalaw 15y ago
I guess that Leo's post resonated with me because I find that the sharing of what I've learned so far helps me learn it better - and sometimes, there are people who are in the same boat as you before you came to some realization. That is to say, sometimes I get stuck on something that should probably be easy - and when I find the crux, the thing that got me unstuck, sharing that is beneficial to people who are stuck in the same way. We all think and learn differently, so if there's just one other person out there who thinks the same way as me and might find things easier with the same realization I had...well, I think it's worth it.
- pbjorklund 15y ago
  The act of sharing also requires you to evaluate what you know . It is through the act of teaching that we can be more certain that we have truly learnt. I myself often think that I know something, but when I try to explain it to someone I often find nuances that I hadn't considered yet. I don't think Leo is talking about giving the keynote adress at some GCC symposium but rather sharing with the intent of gathering feedback as to gain further insight into the subject. It's not so much about training someone as it is about growing knowledge together.
larve 15y ago
TL;DR: Go deep, but make a map. I would think that complicated topics like compiler construction or LISP implementation actually benefit from deep knowledge and understanding. There are a few topics where I feel like I have achieved some kind of mastery, and it comes with a) the knowledge that I actually know nothing about the subject itself b) a kind of uncanny "wisdom" about where to look for problems, further reference c) the ability to explain the topic in terms of very simple concepts and examples, while still being able to answer most questions. A concrete example I like to give about this is: I've been programming with all my heart for 18 years, 8 hours a day. Yet I still feel as dumb in front of a for loop for fear of making an off by one as in the first days. What I am able to do now however is know where the dragon lays, double check it, write some tests around it, and being able to pinpoint the problematic for loop in the complete program in a "usually" pretty short time. Or being able to look at the compiler part responsible when it's actually the compiler making the off by one. Or checking how threadsafe the whole thing is. If that doesn't work I could still rewrite the whole thing in a recursive fashion. Or asynchronously with a state machine. And sometimes I'm just a moron and I made a stupid mistake and took 5 hours to find it, and feel as much as a newbie as I did when I was 13. For example, once you know "everything" about compiler construction: LALR parsing, AST construction, register allocation, SSA trees, static analysis, written a few compilers for your own usage, extended existing ones, wrote a few backends for LLVM, created a language of your own with some following on the internet, you realize you know nothing. You don't know how register allocation works on an IA64, or maybe you have no grasp anymore about how register banks work on modern CPU cores, or maybe you have no idea about how a JIT on ARM would work, and that's just register allocation. You know that you've given it a really serious try, but there is just no way that you actually know anything about compilers. However, you are able to explain what a compiler does to a layman in simple terms, transforming a formula with multiplications into a formula without multiplications. You are able to explain what a compiler does to a beginning programmer by actually implementing one right in front of her, in 80 lines of python. And you are actually able to answer her questions, which can be extremely difficult questions, while being able to gauge the complexity of the answer and tailor fit it. That's why I think that deep knowledge is very valuable. What I find very important to write down (and maybe communicate to others, I don't know) is the steps you are taking while learning a topic, the resources you are reading, the conversations you have. I learnt a few artistic fields in the last years, where practice as a physical and mental activity is there to engrain an intuitive understanding of the topic in your soul. In drawing and in music, it's more through practice than through thinking that I acquire new concepts. I play and focus and draw and do some exercises or copy some of the masters, and one day I wake up and I somehow know it's there. And the way and practice and exercises that led to that insight are very easy to forget. It's very easy to forget that it's probably from copying this one painting over and over that I suddenly understood how to render wood. The only way to communicate that kind of knowledge to other people is to have a whip and tell them "copy that painting 5 times over, then you'll understand" because it is so incredibly hard to fit that knowledge into words. The process is probably slightly the same for more "left brain" activities, but it's easier to be rational about the way to go about it. Still, I now try to write down which book, which exercise and which program I did, in the hope of one day tracing down how some of my "expert" traits came to be.

szany 15y ago

I think the right attitude is to have enough humility to ask questions, not to assume enough expertise to give answers.