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in reply to Leaving the "Know-it-all" Paradigm towards a Programmers Mindset

In any field of endeavour, and computer science and, specifically, perl are no different, there are three types of people:

  1. Those who don't know what they're doing, and know they don't,
  2. Those who don't know what they're doing, yet think they do, and
  3. Those who know what they're doing, and know they do.
It's that middle group that gives the first and last all the trouble: by misleading the first, and annoying the living $#!+ out of the last.

No one, I would imagine, jumps directly from the first to the last - pretty much everyone is in the middle group for anything that they get into the last group for. The ones to watch out for are the ones who stay in the middle group. I know some people like that. In fact, I know a lot of people like that... ;-)

  • Comment on Re: Leaving the "Know-it-all" Paradigm towards a Programmers Mindset

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Re^2: Leaving the "Know-it-all" Paradigm towards a Programmers Mindset
by itub (Priest) on Nov 07, 2005 at 22:58 UTC
    What, no group 4? ;-)

    4. Those who know what they're doing, and don't know that they do.

[reply]
      I realize that you were being tongue-in-cheek, but I often consider the 4 stages of mastery to be (in order from least to greatest)
      1. Not knowing what you don't know (i.e. you've never heard of anything in the domain)
      2. Knowing what you know (i.e. you know only those things that you've specifically been told or looked up)
      3. Knowing what you don't know (i.e. you know those things learned above, but also realize and know what parts of the domain you've yet to learn)
      4. Not knowing what you know (i.e. your knowledge of the domain is so great that you can't list everything that you know about it, but are able to recall anything from within it)
      I think that I got this ordering from somewhere here in the monestary, but laziness prevents me from looking for it. I'm sure someone will come along and point to the reference.

      thor

      Feel the white light, the light within
      Be your own disciple, fan the sparks of will
      For all of us waiting, your kingdom will come

[reply]

        This list of four states of knowledge is also known as

        1. unconsciously incompetent
        2. consciously incompetent
        3. consciously competent
        4. unconsciously competent
        I don't know where it comes from, but one of my friends and mentors mentioned it some time ago.

        Alex / talexb / Toronto

        "Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

[reply]

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