A2) Point out mistakes to share the benefit of your experience.
The problem is that people have a real hard time distinguishing between A1 and A2, and this drives a lot of people to say that we shouldn't even try for A2, and just try to build stuff so people can learn from our experience without the troublesome burden of communicating with us.
Good point. I think A2 can be distinguished from A1 if the writer is willing to put in a little work. Some of the best lessons I learned were from people saying, "Oh, yeah, I made a mistake like that once. Here's how I think about it now. And let me tell you the story of an even bigger mistake I made."
But that sort of compassionate oral tradition only takes us so far. The number of people who will ever approach the level of a professional engineer is small. I think if we want to squeeze the full value out of digital technology, it's going to have to be approachable to the non-expert. Being compassionate in discussion can help there, but I think it's even more important to be compassionate in construction.
Comments
There are really two versions of A:
A1) Be assholes.
A2) Point out mistakes to share the benefit of your experience.
The problem is that people have a real hard time distinguishing between A1 and A2, and this drives a lot of people to say that we shouldn't even try for A2, and just try to build stuff so people can learn from our experience without the troublesome burden of communicating with us.
Good point. I think A2 can be distinguished from A1 if the writer is willing to put in a little work. Some of the best lessons I learned were from people saying, "Oh, yeah, I made a mistake like that once. Here's how I think about it now. And let me tell you the story of an even bigger mistake I made."
But that sort of compassionate oral tradition only takes us so far. The number of people who will ever approach the level of a professional engineer is small. I think if we want to squeeze the full value out of digital technology, it's going to have to be approachable to the non-expert. Being compassionate in discussion can help there, but I think it's even more important to be compassionate in construction.