Comment by xlii

Comment by xlii 18 hours ago

3 replies

I find the article interesting and well written. There might be some theory crafting but it resonates with my personal experience, especially this:

> The expert’s intuition is often formidable, but rarely comprehensible. This inability to clearly explain their decisions is what makes it so useful for novices to spend time with experts.

I really like spending time with novices, especially if they are truly interested in the domain. It’s symbiotic because it also challenges my own opinions and judgements and the boost often is for everyone.

It’s not surprising though that it is hard to explain rationale. How one can fit 2 years of pain in a sentence, a paragraph or even day long story?

Direct interaction allows to shorten distance because it aligns on exact personal level. We find the efficient channels of communication based on prior experience, so it’s not building one filar from ground up to have a bridge, but instead use the almost-same-level and build upon it on both sides.

pixl97 9 hours ago

>How one can fit 2 years of pain in a sentence, a paragraph or even day long story?

I like to call it thinking in compressed binary objects. It's like a bunch of concepts I execute without actually thinking about because I do them so often.

beyarkay 10 hours ago

(author here) Thanks! this was my first anything published to the internet, glad to see it's been received so well.

> I really like spending time with novices

From reading the various comments about this essay, it seems like there's a pretty sharp divide, some people love spending time with novices, others despise the activity.

  • 12_throw_away 7 hours ago

    It depends on the novice IME. Some listen and try to follow my advice (good), some listen and ask probing questions (great), some ask such great questions that I end up learning from _them_ (amazing) ... and some nod politely then go back to copy-and-pasting from stackoverflow and chatgpt (makes me want to die).