My late work policy conflates mastery of content with professional work habits. A student can learn everything I want him to learn and more, yet earn a low grade by not submitting assignment on time.
To be honest, that’s probably not a problem. In our current system, it is not entirely clear what a grade means anyway.
take that, hawking!
This happened while i was trying to code up an index page today
Weird Science: It’s a UNIX system, I know this
So, if you think you can learn a tool’s mindset — the kind of hammer it is and therefore what sort of nails it thinks everything is — by trying things without understanding, you should. But typing random svn commands, or calling random layout-related functions when building a UI, or is like playing Battleship or Mastermind: you only get a few bits of information on each attempt, and the information you get is more like clues in a puzzle than a clear explanation of what you need to know. Please pay attention to the time you spend in trial and error. Because if it’s more than the time it takes to read the manual, you’re actually getting less done than you could. And it’s easy to notice this time: it’s generally frustrating, unproductive, quality-of-life sucking time.
If you find you’re working that way, please don’t feel bad. Most people do it. I’m not sure where it comes from. Bad, “results oriented” managers? Most people learn it before the first job. Bad managers depicted in movies and TV? Parents? Teachers? I don’t know.
But if you really want to spend the most time on the fun part of your craft — creating stuff, not debugging it or pounding your head against the wall — then you need to invest in yourself. It’s in your best interest. And it’s in the best interest of your company.
It struck me that there was a massive chunk of the book missing, which was bridging the technical details of the RDF spec with how a car company might design and implement a shared ontology using the specs just described. This gap was so apparent that it got me thinking about the different kinds of computer books out there, which generally come in three flavors:
