
You only get one chance to be a beginner - illdave
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3179-you-only-get-one-chance-to-be-a-beginner
======
espeed
_But until then, you’re in a magical position to make great strides. To
propose radical solutions, deliberately ignorant ideas that just might be
brilliant._

A more general opportunity is the opportunity to document misconceptions. I'm
in the process of learning Clojure, and it's the little misconceptions that
hang you up. But just a little change in perspective in how you see things can
totally unstuck you.

Documenting those little changes in perspective, those little ah-ha moments,
could really help future travelers.

I've been recording them as much as possible, noting the "the one
thing/sentence that I could have told my future self that would have helped me
understand it" (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3998679>). Being able to
view a collection of everyone's would be enlightening.

~~~
SatvikBeri
Do you have those up anywhere? I'm also learning Clojure, and would find that
very useful.

~~~
espeed
Not yet -- I'll work on putting those up somewhere. Until then, I can tell you
this: Stuart Halloway's "Programming Clojure"
([http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Clojure-Stuart-
Halloway/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Clojure-Stuart-
Halloway/dp/1934356867/)) is the best book (I've read through them all).

Stu works alongside Rich so he understands Clojure at a deep level, but he's
still in tune to the beginner's mind and is able to clearly explain concepts
and provide the context you need for the ideas to resonate.

------
butterfi
You may only get one chance to be a beginner, but you can cultivate "Beginners
Mind" or "Shoshin" (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin>)

Edit: "Saadat A. Khan suggests that "Beginner's mind embodies the highest
emotional qualities such as enthusiasm, creativity, zeal, and optimism. If the
reader reflects briefly on the opposites of these qualities, it is clear to
see that quality of life requires living with beginner's mind. With beginner's
mind, there is boundlessness, limitlessness, an infinite wealth."

------
isnotchicago
Reminds me of Neil Gaiman's recent commencement speech at the University of
the Arts. I definitely recommend checking it out if this little tidbit of
advice from 37signals was inspiring at all.

EDIT: forgot to link to the speech: <https://vimeo.com/42372767>

~~~
ollerac
That commencement speech was awesome, but I really wish 37s would take a break
from blogging for a while. They jumped the shark like 2 years ago when they
stopped saying new things.

~~~
dhh
You're behind the times. We jumped the shark seven years ago:
[http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/have_we_jumped_the_shark....](http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/have_we_jumped_the_shark.php).

------
etrain
It would be awesome to collect some concrete examples of complete beginners
coming in with revolutionary ideas - both in business and coding.

~~~
ken
"I once asked Ivan Sutherland, how could you possibly have done the first
interactive graphics program, the first non-procedural programming language,
the first object-oriented software system all in one year? He said, well, I
didn't know it was hard!"

\-- Alan Kay, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOZqRJzE8xg#t=3m45s>

------
tferris
_... you have the clarity to make things drastically better. You won’t miss
the non-sense the veterans have long since accepted as the norm. Once you’ve
acclimated to the temperature of the pot, you’ll get boiled alongside all the
other frogs._

The message of this one paragraph is kind of ok but the rest and in particular
DHH's choice of words is as usual awkward and feels like flatulent talk from a
self-help book—too many adjectives and over-zealously constructed metaphors.

What he is talking about is not about being a beginner or that you only get
one chance to be a beginner, it's just about _change_ :

\- That you face change all the time

\- That you should always be prepared for change

\- And that you should actively seek for change the entire time and see change
as something beneficial

Thus, you get a chance to be a beginner more than once with every change.

------
nsmartt
>You won’t miss the non-sense the _veterans have long since accepted as the
norm._

I couldn't help but think "Isn't this one of those things veterans accept as
the norm? That you can only do this once, and, after that, your view is
tainted forever?"

I refuse to accept this.

------
simonbarker87
It is true that you can make quick progress as a beginner but there are other
areas where is can be painfully slow. Launching a new product while dealing
with the growing pains of a new business can cause a lot of wasted time.
Having someone with more experience around can be invaluable to a new start
up, especially if you are doing something other than software where the start
up costs are prohibitively high (tooling, patents etc)

------
dasil003
I wonder if DHH feels like Rails was his best work and that's now behind him
(at least the revolutionary capacity).

------
squarecat
<http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=odec#99>

