I really like the point about reading books. I often notice that some engineers miss a lot by preferring videos and shallow posts over documentation and books.
Also, it strikes me how often people would rather ask a question on something trivial rather than read the docs or at least Google the question.
Being able to search for information is such a crucial skill
> Also, it strikes me how often people would rather ask a question on something trivial rather than read the docs or at least Google the question.
This is in my opinion one of the easiest pitfalls of modern enterprise software development. Too often I catch myself asking people questions that I could quite easily find the answer to myself. This both devalues documentation, since it won't be used anyway, and wastes the time of the people I ask.
One of my greatest points of self improvement has been to catch myself and look at the documentation first. Then if I really can't figure ot out. Turn the question into a question that can be answered by improving the documentation.
I'm nowhere near perfect at it, in a moment of weakness I still ask questions I shouldn't have asked, but I'm proud of how often I stop myself.
I work with young developers (twenty-somethings) that really don't like going through the books and documentation when dealing with something new. They much rather go hands-on from the getgo and deal with doubts as they arise.
They're pretty fast like that and I admire the hacker spirit. But I think they miss important nuance that a proper training (even self-) would give them.
I agree with a lot of the points mentioned in this article. But one thing I'm not sure of is how does knowing the deep underlying fundamentals of CPU, memory, http etc . Help you be a better engineer, cause most engineers just work at a very high levels of abstraction and the languages and framerorks used at that level don't allow low level access for memory etc anyway. I mean you should not be clueless about these basic things buy I don't understand the day to day application of it, outside of academia.
Based on my understanding, this is similar to how commercial pilots are trained. They are nowhere near the level of understanding to build or repair aircraft systems, but they need to understand the basics of systems to make informed decisions and have the "mechanical sympathy" not to be clueless when operating the aircraft.
At least, that's how I motivate myself to learn more about low-level stuff while setting up CRUD endpoints at work.
dondraper36|11 months ago
Also, it strikes me how often people would rather ask a question on something trivial rather than read the docs or at least Google the question.
Being able to search for information is such a crucial skill
delusional|11 months ago
This is in my opinion one of the easiest pitfalls of modern enterprise software development. Too often I catch myself asking people questions that I could quite easily find the answer to myself. This both devalues documentation, since it won't be used anyway, and wastes the time of the people I ask.
One of my greatest points of self improvement has been to catch myself and look at the documentation first. Then if I really can't figure ot out. Turn the question into a question that can be answered by improving the documentation.
I'm nowhere near perfect at it, in a moment of weakness I still ask questions I shouldn't have asked, but I'm proud of how often I stop myself.
marcuschong|11 months ago
They're pretty fast like that and I admire the hacker spirit. But I think they miss important nuance that a proper training (even self-) would give them.
Ghos3t|11 months ago
dondraper36|11 months ago
https://wa.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/2020-07-02T19-33-2...
Based on my understanding, this is similar to how commercial pilots are trained. They are nowhere near the level of understanding to build or repair aircraft systems, but they need to understand the basics of systems to make informed decisions and have the "mechanical sympathy" not to be clueless when operating the aircraft.
At least, that's how I motivate myself to learn more about low-level stuff while setting up CRUD endpoints at work.