4 ms·
Yeah, there's a really odd all or nothing kind of attitude with knowledge, experience or skill, as if "being smart" is like a linear growth Pokemon level-thing
by gremlinunderway 3y ago
Yeah, there's a really odd all or nothing kind of attitude with knowledge, experience or skill, as if "being smart" is like a linear growth Pokemon level-thing rather than being more like a radar chart of skills and experience.
Which I find so odd and absurd in a profession that's full of esoteric knowledge. Being experienced and smart obviously is a huge asset, but if you just aren't familiar with library X but new guy with no experience has been doing nothing but library X, the latter guy is the one to take advice from.
- munificent 3y agoSoftware development strongly self-selects for people who like black-and-white, all-or-nothing, binary reasoning. Few people have patience for a tool that will fail to even attempt to run a several-million-line program because there happens to be a trivial typo in one line in one file. It should be no surprise that kind of people for whom behavior like that is reasonable are the kind of people to think intelligence is all-or-nothing, and that are too happy to point out true but irrevelant inaccuracies in a piece of writing.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoSomething I often reflect on is the trend of engineers of all kinds being somewhat overrepresented in extremist movements. I think it's related: discomfort with inconsistency and uncertainty can push you to extremes in any domain. And the extreme viewpoints are where black and white thinking is closest to correct, and may be useful or valued.