New Beginning
photo credit jekyllrb.com
I’ve moved my blog over to a jekyll setup and a cleaner, simpler design. This is mainly my response to reading some slides I found on Hacker News.
That being said, let me go ahead and motivate you to write yourself.
Have you ever tried to explain something to someone, and they just didn’t get it? You start talking about your earth-shattering idea and they excitedly nod in approval. You’re thinking “great, they know what I’m talking about, they’re excited about it too, maybe as excited as I am.” Meanwhile, they are thinking “what the hell is this dude talking about.” You ask them for some input, and they’re totally speechless. Not speechless because your idea is so awesome. Speechless because they are totally lost.
How about when you are trying to help someone out? They’re nodding, just as usual. Then you’re like, “yeah, so I think you probably just need to re-compute the convergence code on that set of data with a lower tolerance and that should get rid of the ghosting effect.” Stunned look. Glazed eyes. Do they want you to just do it for them, or are they just not understanding?
In some cases, you try rephrasing your questions and they figure it out eventually. Or, they just give up and stop caring, agreeing with you so they can eject themselves from the conversation.
These same people made or are making it through school, work, and other social interactions though. They had to have listened or paid attention to something along the way. They learned to read, walk, write, type, and play video games, right? It’s probably not that you have some super-genius idea that is incomprehensible to anyone but the top ten percent of rocket scientists, or that the concept you are trying to explain is so hard only Story Musgrave can wrap his head around it.
Ideas should be accessible to anyone. Not only would it be nice to stop re-explaining things, but it would also ease the burden on other people. I’ve caught myself emptily nodding before plenty of times, even though I really wish I could have followed along.
It just takes practice. This blog is how I’m going to practice. You should practice with me.