Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

Only dead fish go with the flow.

Learning isn’t done to you; it’s something you do.

As a counterexample, consider the case of the developer who claims ten years of experience, but in reality it was one year of experience repeated nine times. That doesn’t count as experience.

I’ve heard from teams who have created email-free afternoons or entire days: no email, no phone calls, no interruptions. The developers involved said these were the most productive, happiest times of the week.

That’s not what it’s all about. In fact, it seems we tend to misun- derstand the very meaning of the word education. Education comes from the Latin word educare, which literally means “led out,” in the sense of being drawn forth. I find that little tidbit really interesting, because we don’t generally think of educa- tion in that sense—of drawing forth something from the learner. Instead, it’s far more common to see education treated as some- thing that’s done to the learner—as something that’s poured in, not drawn out. This model is especially popular in corporate train- ing, with a technique that’s known as sheep dip training.

However, for programmers, combining rich, flexible human thought with the rigid constraints of a digital computer exposes the power and the deepest flaws of both.

Coupled code is hard to change: alterations in one place can have secondary effects elsewhere in the code, and often in hard-to-find places that only come to light a month later in production.