>One of the premises of the book is that much of >practical knowledge cannot be transmitted by books or even >by word of mouth >but only through the guided experience of the master teaching >the student >through an apprenticeship, the silversmith teaching the >apprentice, the >pianist teaching her pupil, the biologist or chemist teaching his >graduate >student.
Very true indeed. I would also add by doing it yourself and struggling your way through it. In fact, no guidance from an expert teacher will do you any good without this element. If it is not present, you are multiplying the teacher's expertise and effort by a big fat zero. I remember my first encounter with C. I tried to write a simple Hello, World program. It was before the days of Google. I was also fairly new to the whole idea of a computer at that time - access to computers in the Soviet Union in the early 90s was rather limited. So I sat there for 3 hours trying different things until I figured out that I was missing a semicolon. Superficially it looked like a waste of time, but such frustrating exercises with the trivial helped build something inside. You cannot pack that into a college degree, a book, or a patent. But this something makes a difference between getting the job done or not. -- Sasha Pachev AskSasha Linux Consulting http://asksasha.com Fast Running Blog. http://fastrunningblog.com Run. Blog. Improve. Repeat. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
