Remember these things from school?
Good for measuring angles, and indeed reminding ourselves that there are always other angles or perspectives on everything we do.
I was browsing a colleagues’ blog last week and found an interesting entry that points to a post in the blog of Ben Collins-Sussman.
The post is about the insecurity of IT ‘nerds’ with respect to their work, specifically the ‘develop in a vacuum‘ mentality and the abhorrence expressed at the idea of peer review. It was written almost a year ago but people are still adding to the debate today and the point is most definitely still valid, very valid, and not just within the sphere of IT.
Our very own DVC, Professor Graham Webb blogged about academic standards in general terms last week and made the point that peer review has an important role to play here too. I’m not implying that academics or we IT nerds are more insecure than anyone else, in fact I think it is a human trait that we can all improve on.
You can read Ben’s post in its entirety, complete with the subsquent 90+ comments here, but for me, the closing paragraph says it all.
Be transparent. Share your work constantly. Solicit feedback. Appreciate critiques. Let other people point out your mistakes. You are not your code. Do not be afraid of day-to-day failures — learn from them. (As they say at Google, “don’t run from failure — fail often, fail quickly, and learn.”) Cherish your history, both the successes and mistakes. All of these behaviors are the way to get better at programming. If you don’t follow them, you’re cheating your own personal development.
Of course Agile helps us come out of our boxes a little bit and encourages the team approach to planning and execution and I think with that, the team responsibility for failure and subsequent improvement. It is probably worth remembering that actually soliciting critique is healthy and (aside from ultimately improving the end result) if you are concerned about shouldering responsibility for everything, it provides another pair of shoulders, free of charge.
