Joel Spolsky has posted a new essay on programming: “Lord Palmerston on Programming.” Joel writes about how vast the pools of knowledge programmers need to master to become really expert in each of the many programming “worlds” that are popular today. Choice quote:
People who only know one world get really smarmy, and every time they hear about the complications in the other world, it makes them think that their world doesn’t have complications. But they do. You’ve just moved beyond them because you are proficient in them. These worlds are just too big and complicated to compare any more. Lord Palmerston: “The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it.” |
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