Senior Moments

When pairing with new programmers I find it hard to remember how much I’ve learned and what it took to learn it. It’s not just expert-induced amnesia. Sure, many aspects of programming come almost naturally to me, now. When I look back on my cough-ty-cough years in the industry, I realise what a huge amount of knowledge and learning my “natural” instincts are really based on. But I cannot easily recall any more what it is like being at the foothills of that uphill climb.

This makes it difficult to put myself into the shoes of my colleague when playing the Leader role in a Leader/Adopter pair. As a result, I skip ahead too fast, or use trivialising language to describe things that my unfortunate pair has little experience with.

What can someone in the Leader role do when they are as old and forgetful as me?

One thing I find useful is to go back and read my old journal entries and blog posts. I’m lucky to still have my old notebooks with me, and I started blogging years ago, so have plenty of articles I wrote when I was emboldened by the confidence of youth. I am frequently surprised by what I then found surprising.

Which is a good reason to encourage programmers who are currently Adopters to write things down, maintain a learning journal, or blog about things they have learned and/or invented. We’ll write more about this in a future post.