Pragmatic Thinking Learning: A Journey From Novice To Expert — Using The Dreyfus Model Effectively
Table Of Contents
About Series
The Summary
— Accepting Responsibility
— Keeping Expertise In Practice
The Mind Map
Outro
About Series
This story is the fourth part of the series of Chapter 2: Journey From Novice To Expert.
The Summary
Accepting Responsibility
Twenty-five years ago, nurses were expected to follow orders without question. We see very much the same problems with programmers and their project managers or project architects.
Feedback from coders has traditionally been either lacking entirely, brutally rejected, or simply lost in the noise of the project. Programmers often implement something they know is wrong, ignoring the obvious warning signs.
“I was just following orders!” doesn’t work
But in order to accomplish this change of attitude, we do need to raise the bar. We must take the advance beginners we have and help them raise their skill levels to competent. A major way to help achieve that is to have good exemplars in the environment; people are natural mimics.
We learn best by example. In fact, if you have children, you may have noticed that they rarely do as you say but will always copy what you do.
Learn by watching and imitating
Trumpeter Clark Terry used to tell students the secret to learning music:
- Imitate
- Assimilate
- Innovate
Keeping Expertise In Practice
Companies need to take a much closer, much more informed look at the value that these star developers bring to an organization.
Providing the right environment for skilled developers is critical. Given that the highest-skilled developers are orders of magnitude more productive than the least-skilled developers, the current common salary structures for developers are simply inadequate.
Setting a pay scale and career ladder that reflects a top coder’s value to the organization is the first step toward making this a reality.
Keep practicing in order to remain expert
The Mind Map
Outro
For me, there are two interesting quotes from this summary.
First:
Learn by watching and imitating
Second:
Keep practicing in order to remain expert
