Hacker News Reader

Comment by sebringj | Hacker News Reader

I'm coming from learning all about toothpicks and glue, then seeing every problem solved as building things with toothpicks and glue. It was quick and fun at first but my creations were brittle and sometimes were dangerous even. Gradually I became aware of ductape, saws, plywood, nails, hammers, steel, etc, then pre-fabricated parts. Eventually, I ended up buying some from vendors even that had compatible standards so I could make things quicker piecing them together. In the end, just having to try to come up with things that were already made seemed stupid and a waste of my time but unfortunately, that idea only seems to make sense to people that have gone through the same.

But it ain't all bad, see. I hear some young folks are coming up with brand new types of toothpicks and glue, hell some of em' I hear put themselves together.

View on HN

I had a new developer decided to make their own charting library. It seemed like the best idea was to let him try and learn why that was a bad idea. Which looking back I think many other people had the same idea with me.

Honestly, I think programming is at the point where apprenticeships are a good idea. Thirty years ago the tools where changing to fast, and eventually we can codify the correct body of knowledge to have useful formal education. But, education seems to default to handing people a bunch of tools and getting them to learn it own their own.

> It seemed like the best idea was to let him try and learn why that was a bad idea

This is exactly why it's a good idea to try your own implementations. You get intimately familiar with the problem. You understand the trade-offs, corner cases, api design, etc. far better that way. And there might be a slight chance that you come up with a better solution.

I've heard that Feynman had a motta something like "If I can't build it, I can't claim to understand it."

Also, I like the idea of apprenticeships. At some point our academic culture seems to have shifted from liberal education to some kind of quasi-vocational preparation. This is probably in response to the death of apprenticeships when we started requiring a bachelor's degree for entry level professional jobs.

"What I cannot create I do not understand."

> Honestly, I think programming is at the point where apprenticeships are a good idea.

I strongly agree with that. There's still a lot of important "tactile" experience that is easier to transfer via mentoring than to learn from written material.

> Thirty years ago the tools where changing to fast

My impression is that the pace of change of tools is only increasing (to pretty ridiculous levels if you look at the web ecosystem).

> and eventually we can codify the correct body of knowledge to have useful formal education.

This should be the goal, yes. But I don't feel like we have identified much of the knowledge that's worth codifying. Instead, the industry seems to be running in circles, each iteration less efficient and more bloated than the previous one. I wonder what the way out for us is?

Programming should have always been an apprenticeship system. Maybe add in formal education like a Comp Sci degree, but I've been saying since I entered this industry (which isn't THAT long ago, but still) that apprenticeships would be much better than just going to college.

yah when I first was learning JavaScript, I made my own date library if you can believe it. I learned a lot but then at some point it seemed idiotic but only from the perspective after doing it, not before. We are 4 dimensional after all and information assimilation seems to be also.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com