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On Online Collaboration and Our Obligations as Makers of Software

On Online Collaboration and Our Obligations as Makers of Software

Section titled “On Online Collaboration and Our Obligations as Makers of Software”

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  • In Kathy Sierra’s words, from her book Badass, first on practice:

    Practicing harder and longer can potentially make us even worse than if we did less practicing.

    Building deep expertise takes work, but of a very specific type that’s often the opposite of what people do when practicing.

    Practice does not make perfect On perceptual knowledge: The second attribute of those who became experts is this: they were exposed to high quantity, high quality examples of expertise. (page 128) After enough exposure with feedback, your brain began detecting patterns and underlying structures, without your conscious awareness. With more exposure, your brain fine-tuned its perception and eventually figured out what really mattered. Your brain was making finer distinctions and sorting signal from noise even if you couldn’t explain how. (page 133) These two ideas, deliberate practice and exposure to high-quality examples, should be the forces that drive the design and structure of most apps.

  • My hunches: • When it comes to notetaking, knowledge work (e.g. most kinds of office work that require expertise of some sort) has more in common with creative work than not and benefits from similar approaches. • That most kinds of notetaking don’t need complex organisational structures. • That two-dimensional spaces (like a pinboard) are underused as organisational metaphors in creative software. • That most of the usefulness of notetaking doesn’t come from a system, organisation, or references but the act of writing. • That, ultimately, the goal of the notetaking is to make something for somebody else.