>
> On 25 Aug 98, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > I keep forgetting that I am a professional, and they are not. But
> > checking up on all the little things without making a pest of oneself to
> > ordinary folks is an art...
> Mm... reminds me of the sign hanging at my mechanic's garage (and I
> imagine in countless others'):
My favorite sign said something to the effect that if we find your car
sufficienly filthy, we reserve the right to wash it and charge you for
doing so. I am tempted to add a similar clause to my contract regarding
the state of your existing body of code. (What, you ran it through
Roodmond's Scrunchware? We'll have to charge you $500 to unscrunch it.)
> > How do you deal with competency issues? Or do these things qualify
> > as basic competency issues? Most of the normal folks just seem to go with
> > the first thing that pops into their heads, and don't enjoy explaining
> > their thoughts as my close friends do. I don't think of myself as
> > exceptionally bright, but I tend to evaluate a few options before I do
> > things.
> Basically, my mental processes are driven by two strong impulses: (a) a
> fundamental need to know how things work, and (b) a default tendency to
> try and fix 'em when they don't. This latter habit used to be tinged with a
> certain intellectual arrogance when I was a younger lad, but I've mellowed
> with the years -- I'll quietly offer help when it's sought, but clam up
> otherwise.
In my middle childhood (about eigheen to twenty,) I learned that if
you find a gaff, you can laugh about it only if you tell of an equally bad
gaff that you made yourself. Hence when I find a problem with a client's
code, I start with something like "I remember when I made this kind of
mistake, here is what I do now to avoid it".
But how else can you function in this world except by understanding
how things work??? I mean, if you don't, it is all unpredictable
witchcraft without cause and effect! And then you begin to wonder, if that
light bulb burned out, does that mean your neighbor cursed you? Slowly,
people who are ignorant in those ways, start to lash out at others for
irrational reasons. And soon, it becomes like the Hatfields and McCoys,
the Serbs and the Croats, etc. Reasonableness requires understanding, and
understanding requires curiosity, not mind numbing "training". The drive
towards understanding is the most fundamental HUMAN trait.
> I also have a motto: "There's always a way". I say this, audibly or
> inwardly, at least ten times a day. It applies to programming dilemmas,
> personal worries, financial imperatives, home-repair crises... there's always
> a way, if you simply sit back and analyze a situation long enough.
When I was about three years old, sitting on an inflated inner tube,
dejected because I couldn't do something, my grandfather and I had a
little conversation in which he told me the same thing. "Look for a way.
There is always a way". It is said that shortly there after, I became
difficult to corral, as I began out-smarting my mother.
The time I solve most of the problems at work, is when I take a
snooze in my car at noon, letting my mind play in its field of dreams.
That is the most pleasant time of my life, waking from my nap in the car,
seeing the patterns of possible solutions floating on the surface as I
float up from the depths of my dreams.
> I guess I'm a person who has always craved novelty and intellectual
> stimulation, from my earliest years, and that implulse shows no signs of
> diminishing. I just wear it a little more gracefully than I once did.
YES!!! And I rather suspect that most of the better people in most
fields have similar cravings. On every project I do, I learn some new
things, and teach others some things I know. The good people I keep in
touch with forever. The others... I shrug off.
P. S. if anyone wants one free copy of the Daily Delta report on what
people are asking about on the web, just ask.
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