Don’t Understand? You’re About to Learn Something

  • Very nice editorial. Cool new paradigm!

  • Andy Warren (3/9/2015)


    Gary, I don't any experience with Eastern culture, but what you say fits my impressions from what I've read about it here and there, I had not considered it as a cultural issue. That's interesting. Interesting to imagine a culture that embraces it and how to achieve that mindset, interesting to think about what might come out of that.

    I think the east-west distinction on this imaginary, the product of ignorance.

    I'm definitely a product or Western culture, but ever since I was about 8 years old I've regarded a day where I didn't find something new that I didn't understand as a wasted day. I spent quite a bit of time in India in the 2000s, and there are people there who think because they have a BSc degree in computing they don't need to learn anything new, and rather a lot of people working on software who think their degree means they will never need to learn a new programming paradigm (so they learnt C# when it was new, because it's still the same old paradigm as COBOL and FORTRAN and C and C++, but they don't learn F# or Prolog and they do write terrible SQL because they've no concept of relational as opposed to procedural concepts). There's the same proportion of such people in the West as in the East, and equally there are just as many people in the East who learn something new every day as there are in the West.

    Tom

  • TomThomson (3/9/2015)


    ...I think the east-west distinction on this imaginary, the product of ignorance...I spent quite a bit of time in India in the 2000s, and there are people there who think because they have a BSc degree in computing they don't need to learn anything new...

    I would rather consider it a generalisation based on observation of my own and others rather than a product of ignorance (it still doesn't mean that I am right or wrong). Perhaps what you describe is the influence of Western culture. Perhaps.

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • i disagree to a certain extend with Garry.. but not altogether..and since this is non tech in focus ..

    So my first real job in IT after getting the fabled MCSE pre y2k was to give basic computer training to people that never seen computers before - you can blame Apartheid or just lack of opportunities. So i needed to slowly teach them- like boiling frogs analogy .

    So Monday, we discuss where the base of the computer is.. what it does.. by Friday they can do graphs in excel, are competent in Word etc.. with a tertiary certificate 🙂 awsume!

    So one of the things that we have to embrace is in IT is continues learning.. Where i agree with Garry - with a classical degree in accounting after you have your degree your classical training is mostly done (Down here we do have points these days that professionals need to get every year - accountants, doctors etc)

    In IT our strength is our knowledge.

    So i try and teach developers the consequences of bad SQL at work.. there will likely never be money again to fix it. And everybody will build on to it.. Fortunately our dev team are grayish in hair color..

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