Comments on Bill the Lizard: On Learning

Evegeni, Yes, the term "second-order incompet...

2009-07-24T20:41:10.777-04:00

Evegeni,
Yes, the term "second-order incompetence" used in Pragmatic Thinking and Learning is the same as the Dunning-Kruger effect. They do cite the original paper Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments by Dunning and Kruger, but I'm not sure why they chose to use a term that doesn't appear in that paper to describe the same effect.

There is so-called "Dunning-Kruger effect" in which "...people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it"

Not sure if it's the same as the "second-order incompetence".

Anonymous,
There's no real danger in other peop...

2008-12-30T22:46:00.000-05:00

Anonymous,
There's no real danger in other people mistakenly thinking you're an expert in a language (except maybe if it's your boss). Be careful you don't fall into the trap of believing you're an expert yourself after only a few days with a new language, though. That's exactly the kind of second-order incompetence I mentioned in the body of the post. It's very difficult for you to gauge your own ability when you've just recently been exposed to something new.

troelskn,
You make a valid point about prior ex...

2008-12-30T22:39:00.000-05:00

troelskn,
You make a valid point about prior experience, but I don't know how far it applies to programming languages. Python and Ruby are fairly similar languages, so it feels to me like you've loaded the deck. What about C++ and Lisp? Heck, what about C and C++? You could be an expert in one and still take quite a bit longer than a few months to master the other. Still, I take your point: It wouldn't take 10 more years.

The problem with the ten years argument, is that i...

2008-12-30T11:35:00.000-05:00

The problem with the ten years argument, is that it doesn't take previous experience into account. If I started now, and hardly did anything else, I could perhaps become a good guitar player in some 5..10 years time. But if someone who already is an expert bass player, picked up a guitar, he could probably achieve the same skill level in - say - a couple of months.

The same goes for programming languages. A lot of languages are very similar in their idioms and in the context they are use in. If you are already a highly skilled Python programmer, you *can* probably pick up Ruby in three months. The first three days may be spend learning the new syntax, and the rest of the time on learning the libraries and the few idioms that differ. In any case, it won't take ten years.

On the other hand, if you've never done any programming before, it may well take you ten years to learn that skill.

If you know the syntax of the language (half a day...

2008-12-30T10:22:00.000-05:00

If you know the syntax of the language (half a day to 3 days depending on the language), in most cases that is enough to fool most people. There are a few languages like Haskel that are completely different from anything else, but most languages you will deal with are substantially the same (based on C) so you can look things up. Of course if you were an expert you would do a lot of things differently because you would take advantage of some features that don't fit into what you know.

I have personally had the experience of after 2 months of a new language explaining to the creator of the language a better way to solve a problem in it. There are still things I don't use in the most ideal way, but in only took a few days until I could fool other programmers into thinking I was better than I am.

Ken G,

"Wisdom cannot be passed on to the n...

2008-12-13T12:22:00.000-05:00

Ken G,

"Wisdom cannot be passed on to the next generation when said generation is between the ages of 13 and 19."

Awesome quote! I guess every generation has to learn this for themselves. :)

Amazing what you can find starting on StackOverflo...

2008-12-12T14:21:00.000-05:00

Amazing what you can find starting on StackOverflow...

I really like that graph and I'll have to follow up on the other references. The whole thing matches my "perceptions" about my own journey.

BTW, wisdom cannot be passed on to the next generation when said generation is between the ages of 13 and 19. At least not mine!

mmocny,

I'll try that on my smart-mouthed 1...

2008-11-30T22:46:00.000-05:00

mmocny,

I'll try that on my smart-mouthed 14 year old. Something tells me that it's going to be a little bit too subtle for him. :)

I completely agree.

I was lucky enough to h...

2008-11-29T16:25:00.000-05:00

I completely agree.

I was lucky enough to have my parents tell me the Socrates quote as a proverb ever since I was a little kid, trying to act smart.

Comments on Bill the Lizard: On Learning

Evegeni, Yes, the term "second-order incompet...

There is so-called "Dunning-Kruger effect" in which "...people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it" Not sure if it's the same as the "second-order incompetence".

Anonymous,There's no real danger in other peop...

troelskn,You make a valid point about prior ex...