Importance of Basics

Riding a bicycle

Imagine riding a bicycle and having zero knowledge how the handlebars are used for direction, how the brakes are applied for friction, how the pedals are used for motion. I could have given the example of a car but since I don't know how to drive one you will have to bear with my experience of a bicycle ??. And now imagine if you were asked to ride a bicycle when you just managed to get the look and feel of what it is. Lets just say you entered the bicycle shop and sat on it and now your asked to go ahead take it for a ride. If your strong, confident and intelligent enough, sure you will gain a sense on how to go forward but what will you do when you crash and brake of the essentials parts of the bicycle. Then your stranded.

How do you learn then ?

Unless off course, you keep having such mishaps and gradually learn the various parts and functionalities, chances are you may never truly know what you rode. And how long would you want to hurt yourself and your bicycle. Funny way to learn isn't it, but most of us in the IT industry unfortunately and precisely are doing this.

Not only with their computers and technologies, but also self destructing the logical side of their brains, which is responsible for the “WHY” questioning. When you follow the orders blindly to reboot a system or performing a defined set of action to fix a problem, you are programming yourself not to be a good employee but rather a machine.
Your creativity, your innovations, your logical thinking & rational reasoning capability is what makes you a good employee. Hence it got me questing WHY did we loose it ? WHY explain technology when the basics are unclear ? WHY wait for accidents, endangering your product, your people, your company in the process?

Now I’m a firm believer of “Desperate times Desperate measures” but don’t get me wrong here,I am also a firm believer of “You cant build a Great Building on a Weak foundation”

Going ahead

So here’s a thought do what your doing, but make sure you have a justification for yourself why your doing what your doing ?? .
This applies to who are reading this article and trust me, it works across all domains.

A very humble friend used to keep telling me. “Kruti padhai karo padhai ??” Translated in english "Kruti please study". This was every time I approached him for an immediate fix to a technical problem. And my reaction was pretty much similar to yours, when your reading this. "Dude I’m done with college and school days, give me the answer already, how to solve this, times ticking"

And I never got my answers till I did my homework and asked him better questions. Yes I did feel stranded in the moment, but it was not so bad. I researched, I learnt. The right way not being spoon fed and performing programmed actions

That was not a bad answer mind you, it was just a bad question. I did get my answers, when I asked him the right questions. Right questioning came after understanding why things work the way they work. Over the years I have understood the importance of WHY’s and till date I do thank my friend to where it led me. Hell, we still work together very proudly ...

Food for the brains

In busy and ever so advancing times like these, very few will care to correct you like my friend did and that’s when you need to be your own teacher. Agreed very less time but trust me very less knowledge of the basics & foundations, are way more disastrous in the course of time. So if you have not got the answers to your WHY’s, when asked your peers or seniors go back and invest in answering it yourself. Technology is abundant and so are various channels to learn. Chances are the ones you questioned, may also be reading this article and researching with you. Far fetched thought but yes “WHY NOT ? ”

With the invention of cloud there are millions of new terms/services/technologies you will come across but underlying rules are common .Anything and everything to do with a computer will have to do with the following components CPU/Memory/Hardware/Network . Go recall back your computer fundamentals and basics and trust me that hasn’t changed much with the invention of cloud .

In each of us lies that genius who can explain the most complicated architecture or technology in these simple basics. Happy learning happy questioning

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