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Discussion on: 700+ Followers, 800+ Reads in 3 Months: Maybe "Old School" Engineering Still Resonates

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alton_zheng_15fb4bf0d73a3 profile image
Alton Zheng • Edited

This really resonated with me! I completely agree that mindset and discipline matter more than tools. I’m curious - how do you approach teaching or mentoring others to maintain this “old school” engineering mindset in today’s AI-driven environment? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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bumbulik0 profile image
Marco Sbragi

That's a very challenging question. Truth be told, I don't believe there are any fixed rules for being a good teacher, and this was true even before the advent of artificial intelligence.

In my experience, the role of a mentor isn't something you simply "learn" to do; it's a role that others recognize in you. I believe a good mentor must, first of all, know how to listen—setting aside their own biases to truly understand the student.

While a mentor can point the way forward, students must evaluate alternatives based on their own reasoning and problem-solving style. If we only taught predefined standards, software development would stagnate and we would never create anything new. My goal is to instill rigor and a structural mindset, but curiosity and the final decisions must always belong to the developer.

It's difficult to condense into a single comment a mindset that years of practice, experimentation, and experience have shaped—something that even I often struggle to fully rationalise. But it is right that it should be this way, and that it should be different for everyone. We are not all the same, and each of us has a different way of building empathy with others.

What do you think? Does this "learning to learn" approach make sense in your current context?