http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/articles/2006/09/13/humility-and-advocacy en-us 40 In Ruby, it's not the dog, it's the tricks! <p>Two interesting web pages just came up on the ruby-talk list.</p> <h2>Humility &#8211; The Path to Learning</h2> Paul Lutus, who recently posted something to the list, and later admitted that he was mistaken about a technical point. This was rightly called out as an unusual occurence on mailing lists, even the well-mannered ruby-talk. <p>He pointed out that he had a &#8220;vested interest&#8221; in admitting his mistakes. And pointed to <a href="http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/narcissism.php">His article on narcissism</a>. Too many denizens of the &#8220;network&#8221; nation exhibit symptoms of believing that they are the smartest guy in the room.</p> <p>As I&#8217;ve said here before, I believe in loosely holding strong opinions. That is when I find, or am presented with evidence which runs counter to one of my opinions, I have to reconsider, and if the evidence is compelling, change or drop the opinion in question. It&#8217;s a personal version of the scientific method.</p> <p>Would that, more programmers, pundits, politicians, and folks in other walks of life follow this practice.</p> <p>While I often state these strong opinions, well strongly, it&#8217;s always in the hope of stirring discussion, so as to continue learning.</p> <h2>Advocacy, vs. Open-Minds</h2> <p>Another good article is Mark-Jason Dominus&#8217; essay about why he <a href="http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/12/advocacy.html">hates language advocacy</a>.</p> <p>Although this article is over 5 years old, and is written for an audience of Perl programmers, it&#8217;s a worthwhile read for fans of Ruby, or any other programming language.</p> <p>His points are that we can learn from other communities, and that taking the stance that &#8220;my tribe is better!&#8221; shuts off that learning, and alienates those who get the impression that because an advocate of language L, say that idea I is unimportant because it&#8217;s outside of standard practice in L, that L is incapable of supporting idea I.</p> <p>Far better to understand I, and how to either express or incorporate it into L, so that those &#8216;needing&#8217; it, and the advocate both understand each other.</p> Wed, 13 Sep 2006 11:43:00 -0400 urn:uuid:41df0b3a-0044-46c9-896b-3ca4cb5261ab Rick DeNatale http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/articles/2006/09/13/humility-and-advocacy advocacy humility strongopinions http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/articles/trackback/28