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.
Comments
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.