Subject: Re: What's up with #'? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 16 Nov 2002 21:17:03 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3246470223792143@naggum.no> * Chris Gehlker | How does one develop such intuition? By actually being humble and showing real humility before the great task of learning, which in practice means a higher affinity for listening than for pronouncing opinions. Ask questions to learn something specific and be open to surprises and all kinds of answers. Stay focused on learning. The stronger you feel a need to make pronouncements, the longer it takes. The more you are willing to accept that other people know more about it than you do, the shorter it generally takes to learn it. You did well to notice that we do not use "smell" in this newsgroup and backed off, which tells me that you easily accept corrections to your assumptions, it just needs to be applied a little more widely. As long as you want to learn and make comments that exhibit your willingness to respect the very long history of the language and see ways to solve your problems rather than ways to create problems. This actually applies to all programming, but for some reason, programming attracts people who have strong opinions on just about everything. The key is to make them have strong opinions on things that matter, which is sometimes hard when they are busy having strong opinions on things that do not matter. -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.