I agree and disagree here. Disagree because you need to master the rules before you break them. This is surprisingly true for most skills say Cooking, Novel writing, or Sketching. Though you might think that it is best to be completely creative and unconstrained, there are written or unwritten rules in every artistic endeavour which is inherent in the medium.
I agree with him that working on a project is often the best ways to learn a new skill. But for heaven sake, heed to what the experienced folk say and deliberate on whether to follow them or not.
I agree and disagree here. Disagree because you need to master the rules before you break them.
This is a truism, but I don't think it's all that applicable to everything.
There are lots of musicians who paved their own way, breaking the rules, without first having "mastered" the previous ruleset. Same for painters (there are pioneer modern painters who could not paint anything Renaissance style for example).
And, yes, there are programmers who created succesful software, even multi-million businesses, without really knowing the whole craft of software engineering.
Isn't, for example, Derek Shivers (who frequents HN from time to time) a classic example of "fake it till you make it"?
Or even this Zuckenberg guy. I don't think Facebook was the result of a master software craftsman.
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I agree and disagree here. Disagree because you need to master the rules before you break them. This is surprisingly true for most skills say Cooking, Novel writing, or Sketching. Though you might think that it is best to be completely creative and unconstrained, there are written or unwritten rules in every artistic endeavour which is inherent in the medium.
I agree with him that working on a project is often the best ways to learn a new skill. But for heaven sake, heed to what the experienced folk say and deliberate on whether to follow them or not.
This is a truism, but I don't think it's all that applicable to everything.
There are lots of musicians who paved their own way, breaking the rules, without first having "mastered" the previous ruleset. Same for painters (there are pioneer modern painters who could not paint anything Renaissance style for example).
And, yes, there are programmers who created succesful software, even multi-million businesses, without really knowing the whole craft of software engineering.
Isn't, for example, Derek Shivers (who frequents HN from time to time) a classic example of "fake it till you make it"?
Or even this Zuckenberg guy. I don't think Facebook was the result of a master software craftsman.
Some early FB code got leaked a while back... Master software craftsman, Zuckerberg was not.