Re:We learn faster when we aren’t told what choices to make
by duxup on Thursday October 01, 2020 @03:59PM
(#24655550)
With a just a few years of experience I consider myself a bit of a noob developer in a small shop.
I'm given the opportunity to say "I'm trying something new, but dorked up and this will take longer". It's not limitless and sometimes I end up playing catch up... but IMO it has paid off a lot in my confidence and skills.
It has been a great experience. Being able to make a real change that actually impacts the product lets me see the results, good and bad.
The real power is rewriting something, finding out why things are the way they are, failing to make it better ... and then that combo really informs the final result that is almost always way better.
I'm a college football fan and a head coach PJ Fleck talks a lot about failure and how he wants his guys to go out on the field, try, and fail. Making choices and failure to him is 100% a part of the process to getting better, not just as a part of "that's what happens" but it is both expected and embraced.
It also reminds me of when I used to have interns sit next to me. The vast majority we'd give simple tasks to and the outcomes I didn't really care about as much as the effort. Most folks really floundered without being told what exactly to do, it was disappointing.
One day a high achiever intern comes in along with a guy who was "a problem" according to the professor.
Both did great, and IMO difference between everyone else and those two wasn't any technical skills or etc... they were fearless. They tried things others wouldn't, they'd dork it up, but they also (to some extent) didn't worry about the results and thus learned super fast. In the end they were the only two we ever actually offered jobs to.
I'm given the opportunity to say "I'm trying something new, but dorked up and this will take longer". It's not limitless and sometimes I end up playing catch up... but IMO it has paid off a lot in my confidence and skills.
It has been a great experience. Being able to make a real change that actually impacts the product lets me see the results, good and bad.
The real power is rewriting something, finding out why things are the way they are, failing to make it better ... and then that combo really informs the final result that is almost always way better.
I'm a college football fan and a head coach PJ Fleck talks a lot about failure and how he wants his guys to go out on the field, try, and fail. Making choices and failure to him is 100% a part of the process to getting better, not just as a part of "that's what happens" but it is both expected and embraced.
It also reminds me of when I used to have interns sit next to me. The vast majority we'd give simple tasks to and the outcomes I didn't really care about as much as the effort. Most folks really floundered without being told what exactly to do, it was disappointing.
One day a high achiever intern comes in along with a guy who was "a problem" according to the professor.
Both did great, and IMO difference between everyone else and those two wasn't any technical skills or etc... they were fearless. They tried things others wouldn't, they'd dork it up, but they also (to some extent) didn't worry about the results and thus learned super fast. In the end they were the only two we ever actually offered jobs to.