building software is half strategy and half improvisation
¶ by !undefined“I’m writing this piece because building software is half strategy and half improvisation, and I really do think there are ways to train in both.”
–
Sara Simon, Learning Fluency
Given that my own background has a lot of overlap with her story, this struck a chord with me. The diverse interests, the broad learning, the liberal arts background. You can focus on computer science (or software engineering, or really anything) early and go as deep as possible, as fast as possible. But you’ll miss things.
But something else struck me here in Sara’s essay – something that should have been obvious to me because I have small children: that our important learning comes not in these big flashes (at least not most of the time), but in the repetition of small things. My kids do this. A tiny thing gets repeated over and over again until its mastered, and then it’s just… there. (And again: this should have been obvious to me from my recent study of Scrum and Agile, and its alignment to shu-ha-ri.)