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"Skill" as a catch-all term is a meaningless word bandied about by those trying to sound as though they know what they are talking about. There are two sets of

by epo 13y ago

"Skill" as a catch-all term is a meaningless word bandied about by those trying to sound as though they know what they are talking about. There are two sets of attributes, the first (commonly called "skill" but perhaps better called "technique") describes how well you can carry out the "motor" activities of your job. The other, and more important in critical circumstances, is "judgement". To describe it by analogy with driving, in the beginning you concentrate on developing experience in operating the vehicle, eventually this becomes more or less automatic. People call this skill and they are wrong, it is a set of learnt reflexes. More important is judgement, knowing how to maintain road awareness, knowing when and how to overtake, when to speed up and when to slow down etc, etc. NB when people talk about the dangers of drinking and driving it is impaired judgement they are mostly talking about (although there is some impaired skill such as poor reaction times which stops them getting out of problems their degraded judgement has got them into). Judgement comes with experience and follows skill acquisition. With surgeons you would hope they know how to make a cut (they have technique). What you really want is someone who knows where and what to cut (they have judgement). And yes, all of this applies to programming and systems design.

tokenadult 13y ago
The quality of good judgment includes knowing whether or not how you move your hands hurts or helps your patient. A surgeon who operates with poor technique can fairly be described as a surgeon with poor judgment. (Disclosure: my basis of knowledge is that my mother was a surgical nurse at a teaching hospital whose surgeons invented many new surgical techniques over the course of her career. My mother was part of the team for some of the very first open-heart surgical procedures performed anywhere in the world. All of the best surgeons in that hospital had good judgment about whether or not to perform surgery, and what technique to use, or to invent, for a particular patient problem, but the teaching surgeons there also had flawless technique.)
crusso 13y ago
The other, and more important in critical circumstances, is "judgement". Whether I die because the surgeon was clumsy and nicked my aorta or because the surgeon exercised poor judgement by not counting sponges routinely so he left one that caused a fatal blood clot would be irrelevant to me because I would be dead. All that matters are outcomes based upon an apples to apples comparison of similar patient contexts.

by epo 13y ago

tokenadult 13y ago

The quality of good judgment includes knowing whether or not how you move your hands hurts or helps your patient. A surgeon who operates with poor technique can fairly be described as a surgeon with poor judgment. (Disclosure: my basis of knowledge is that my mother was a surgical nurse at a teaching hospital whose surgeons invented many new surgical techniques over the course of her career. My mother was part of the team for some of the very first open-heart surgical procedures performed anywhere in the world. All of the best surgeons in that hospital had good judgment about whether or not to perform surgery, and what technique to use, or to invent, for a particular patient problem, but the teaching surgeons there also had flawless technique.)

crusso 13y ago

The other, and more important in critical circumstances, is "judgement". Whether I die because the surgeon was clumsy and nicked my aorta or because the surgeon exercised poor judgement by not counting sponges routinely so he left one that caused a fatal blood clot would be irrelevant to me because I would be dead. All that matters are outcomes based upon an apples to apples comparison of similar patient contexts.