Strides Interactive

Who’re the real kids?Filed Under: Weekly Tuesday Dose of goodness

Dear all,

Today’s post came a little late since I’m really 6 hours behind Singapore time. Yes, I’m in Europe now and hoping the ash will not delay (or even cancel) my return flight.

This article will not be a fully technical article. Instead, it’s an article that should instill some thoughts in all of us.

Especially when we keep thinking that we’re adults.

Why so? Read on…

Introduction

One day, I was observing my little baby daughter’s actions. I realised that we’re protective of her because of her lack of knowledge.
This doesn’t mean that she’s devoid of any sense. She knows what she’s doing to a certain extent and definitely knows that she has certain constraints. Constraints that prevent her from doing whatever she wants.

Therefore, it’s a very constrained world for her. The only way she can express her unhappiness is to cry, and cry louder gradually.

However, when I put myself in her shoes and simulated the similar constraints, I immediately felt like I was going to go crazy!

Decisions and Responsibilities

Most of us think that we’re adults, and that we make our decisions and assume responsibility for it.
But the fact is, do we really consider our constraints properly before assuming responsibility?

My daughter knows her own constraints and sometimes even lament over them by crying. For example, she wants to look out of the window when she was lying on her baby cot but she couldn’t because she can’t stand up. So after a while, she’ll cry and hopes to get our attention.

Then after which, when someone actually carries her, she’ll hope that this someone will bring her near the window where she can look out of it.

That’s a lot of hope you know.

It’s not easy to endure not getting what you want when you have your constraints. Therefore I can say that my daughter, alike any other babies possesses a substantial amount of patience and hope that their desires will be fulfilled.

May I ask, how many adults have such a level of preserverance?

This is what usually happens in the programming world. Something crops up, a developer rushes to fix it and claim responsibility for it.

In fact, this is alike claiming fame and credits for fixing the issue.

However, is it done with careful planning and with patience?

Someone once told me, it’s easy to fix a problem but it’s damned hard to find one.

The truth is, BOTH are difficult to fix.

Should a developer tells me that a problem is easy to fix, then there’s a problem with this guy. Either he’s a super genius or he’s a complete moron.

Yes, finding the cause and location of a problem is difficult. Implementing a fix without causing any regression errors or impact to the application is just as difficult.

Developers usually say that because of their myopic view on the greater picture, that his/her “superior” technical knowledge will save the day. This is plain stupid. In the end, not only does the developer gets shit hitting the ceiling, he or she might cause OTHER developers on the same or even different
teams to stay behind to help re-investigate the same issue.

In the end? Yeah it was a stupid mistake made by the same developer who claimed that he/she can fix it in the shortest amount of time.

Why is that a baby can be aware of her own constraints but not an adult?

My opinion?

First of all, adults are sometimes overly confident about something because of their hindsight. Hindsight can sometimes cloud judgment and complacency will only worsen it. On top of that, hindsight can easily cause judgment to be inaccurate. Underestimating the problem can easily lead to even more complicated problems.

So, one might argue that hindsight is the key to the whole root of the problem and that my daughter doesn’t have the hindsight to even influence her options.

Yes, but babies cannot make their own direct decisions, adults CAN!

Babies may not have the hindsight to consider, but adults CAN!

What a shame!

Some of us adults actually behave like babies when we could have CHOSEN to behave like adults. So what is this? The age of stupidity?? Assumption of responsibilities is a sad way of doing things the wilful way.

Yeah yeah it’s my responsibility. But who really bears the brunt of the consequences when these
“responsibilities” are not upheld?

Adults usually don’t think too long before accepting or assuming conceived responsibilities, that’s the reason why there’re so many cases of shotgun marriages, regressions error-filled implementations, failed projects, lousy decisions, etc.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it’d seem that some adults are really behaving like kids, but using their authority and age as their shield deflect queries on their actions.
In the programming world, it’ll always be cases like:

1) “I’ve been doing this for 10 yrs!!! Who are you to tell me what to do?”
2) “I’ve done this before, so just listen to me!”
3) “It’ll work, it’ll definitely work, if not fire me!”
4) “My years of experience tells me that this will/will not work! So beat it!”

Using reputation, age and hindsight to prevent constructive queries is a definite road to disaster. Much more of a disaster than not commenting your codes.

So, I’ll keep this short for this week! Have a nice week ahead! Hope you’ll think about my opinion on this post.

Signing off,
Jeremy