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4-26-03 Incompetence
An amazing paper from
the American Psychological Association:
... the incompetent will tend to grossly overestimate their skills and abilities.
The paper says that you can't tell the difference between competency and incompetency
(especially your own) until
you're competent. In particular, you think that you're more competent than you actually are,
until you're able to gauge competency accurately (but there's a competency curve for
gauging competency...).
This probably means that as I get better at something, I'll probably feel stupider about
it (since I'll know how much I don't know), which certainly seems to fit with my experience.
In addition, it also says a lot about
how to evaluate potential hires or project partners (only testing will
tell you anything real. Past performance is the best indicator of future performance).
This was also covered in
How to Interview a Programmer.
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Links I Read
Cafe Au Lait
Artima
Daily Python URL
Martin Fowler
Joel on Software
Paul Graham
Cringely
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