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Discussion on: You don't need to know everything (but you should know something well)

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Ben Halpern

I can't believe how many people gave Dan shit on Twitter over his admission that there were things he didn't know. So far outside the spirit of the post, it's boggling.

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James dengel

I think it's a great trait to know where you have gaps of knowledge.

Because you know where your comfort zone is, where to push it and when to find help or look for advice or a book to increase your knowledge, blindly thinking you have everything is not a good place to be.

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rhymes

Exactly, there's value in knowing what you don't know. The issues arise when you don't know what you don't know :D

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rhymes

I was cheering when I read these posts. Why are they bashing him? I'm sure he expected some backlash because in the post he said:

since I’m not in a vulnerable position myself right now, I can be honest about this.

but why from fellow developers? What are people saying?

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Ben Halpern

I think the reaction has been mostly positive, but folks saying “omg he doesn’t know this basic concept?!?”

Insecure projection imo

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Jonathan Kuhl

I mean, he's Dan Abramov, the author of Redux! He's gotta know everything man! He's like the Pelé of React!

But seriously, some people forget we're all human and the software development world is too big for anyone to know everything at once.

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Thomas H Jones II

Perhaps the only thing more frightening than not knowing "everything" is when you discover that even the wizards don't know "everything". What's a common response to fear? Attacking the things that cause (or escalate your sense of) it.

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Thomas Junkツ

I can believe that.
It shows how wrong our industry is. Think of the bad reputation (e.g. being hostile) stackoverflow has/had. There is a long way to go to make it (SO as well as the industry) a better place.