Learning and Teaching

it isn't necessary to already be technically competent to get attention from us, it is necessary to demonstrate the kind of attitude that leads to competence — alert, thoughtful, observant, willing to be an active partner in developing a solution

hackers actually like hard problems and good, thought-provoking questions about them. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here. If you give us an interesting question to chew on we'll be grateful to you; good questions are a stimulus and a gift. Good questions help us develop our understanding, and often reveal problems we might not have noticed or though... See more

the kind of answers you get to your technical questions depends as much on the way you ask the questions as on the difficulty of developing the answe

sometimes you’re mentally exhausted after finishing one or more major features.

This is the time to take stock and ease off a little. Perhaps do some small tasks, sometimes known as “chores”, which are less mentally taxing, but nevertheless worthwhile. Maybe take time to pay off some technical debt.

Remember the dictum “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”.

“In the movies there’s this idea that you should just go for your dream,” Glass tells them. “But I don’t believe that. Things happen in stages.” Glass emphasizes that it takes time to get good at anything, recounting the many years it took him to master radio to the point where he had interesting options. “The key thing is to force yourself through

... See more

I will conclude with a passage from Nikola Tesla, the prolific inventor who briefly worked for Thomas Edison. He described Edison’s work habits thus:

[Edison’s] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doing

... See more

Analytic methods are by no means the one true path to scientific enlightenment. They can be used speciously, that is to say, without empirical justification, and in many situations, they fail to produce any insight. However, more than Victor would have his readers believe, analytic methods are often an appropriate and illuminating tool for messy, “... See more