On Dec 14, 6:13 pm, Dave Angel <d...@davea.name> wrote: > On 12/14/2012 01:56 AM, Devin Jeanpierre wrote: > > > On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 1:13 AM, rusi <rustompm...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Dec 14, 8:33 am, Dave Angel <d...@davea.name> wrote: > >>> Do you know any one computer language thoroughly? Or just a little of > >>> many languages? > >> There is a quote by Bruce Lee to the effect: > >> I am not afraid of the man who knows 10,000 kicks > >> I am afraid of the man who has practised 1 kick 10,000 times > > It's worth pointing out that kicks stay relevant for your entire life. > > Unfortunately, many programming languages don't. > > > I guess the next metaphor would be stock investments and > > diversification. Point is, don't just practice one kick. > > But if you never learn any one move thoroughly, knowing what several > others are supposed to look like isn't going to help.
It comes down to the difference between active and passive knowledge. Here is an interview that distinguishes between doing music and merely passively hearing and the unfortunate consequences of assuming the latter is enough: http://jacobneedleman.squarespace.com/blog/2012/12/12/music-is-something-you-do.html Ideas which were summarized by the great pianist Josef Lhevine as follows: If I dont practice for one day I know it If I dont practice for two days my audience knows it If I dont practice for three days the critics know it So much of what passes for CS education is about doling out pre-cooked things -- programs, concepts, jargon -- that companies can be forgiven for being stringent about whom they employ. Heres Alan Kay on Stanford: (One could expect other univs to do worse): I fear —as far as I can tell— that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training. I’ve heard complaints from even mighty Stanford University with its illustrious faculty that basically the undergraduate computer science program is little more than Java certification. from http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
