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Montegasppα Cacilhας
Montegasppα Cacilhας

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The Surprising Technicians’ Lack o’ Knowledge

Original post in ℳontegasppα’s Thoughts


I’ve been really astonished by an unexpected fact: Computer technicians are afraid of knowledge. 😱

I’m telling you something happened with my team with no fear of diminishing anyone, ’cause the behaviour I’m describing isn’t an isolated case, but common to many technicians, if not to most of us.

I brought to my team a paper about algebraic data types that was relevant to a project we was designing. The team reactions were since unbelief and repudiation to pure horror.

And it was nothing but a trivial academic paper on Technology!!

Thenceforth I’ve been paying attention to how technicians learn, and I discovered a very annoying reallity: technicians have learned from professional panelists¹ and programming gurudons instead of from formal education; they use tech-communities as information source instead of a place for sharing it. 😲

So the academic slang sounds alien for most of software developers.

This week I was debating with an external asset, and he was defending a plausable approach, but high-costed. I argued that approach, though plausable, aggregates not enough value to justify the associated cost.

So he told me: “We technicians have always done that way, so it’s the right way.” But I’m a technician too! 😤

That was my answer: that argument works for non-technicians; for me, he needed to present a well-grounded technical explanation. And he wasn’t able to do that.

That’s the same problem: an unaware technician trying to trick others to fake knownledge. Unfortunately it’s the standard.

I’m here begging you to get out of panelists and gurudons, and rather inform yourselves from proper sources; use communities to share your experience, not in search of education.

If you wanna watch some good tech videos, refer to academic ones, TED, TEDEd, and TEDx, not stage developers and showman speakers.

Please…


¹I’m using the word panelist as pejorative for “stage speaker”.

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