
The 10/120 Rule - soundsop
http://kinderism.net/2008/08/21/the-kinderisms-the-10120-rule
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kylec
_The 10/120 rule is more about productivity and maximizing your efforts toward
things that you are naturally good at._

This is good some of the time, but there are other times when you definitely
want to try to learn something that takes more than 10 minutes to explain and
understand. There are some things that just take longer because of the number
of concepts involved.

Imagine trying to learn and understand recursion or continuations if you'd
never heard of them before. From experience I've found that teaching people
about these concepts requires allowing them time to digest their significance,
and, therefore, if you're constantly limiting your learning time then there's
no way you can effectively master and apply these concepts.

~~~
sunkencity
Yea, and maybe you are naturally good at something you have never tried to
understand. Trying to get blocks in ruby and being a seasoned java programmer,
it'll probably take you a few days, but when you have understood it, and the
implications for programming, it'll rock your world. Learn more about diverse
programming stuff and you'll probably start to understand things faster and
better in general programming...

~~~
ardit33
If you just say blocks in ruby is a name for closures, or anonymous functions,
a good programmer will understand it right away. Just b/c somebody codes
mostly java, doesn't mean that they don't know these fundemental concepts.

No need to put java programmers in one basket. mkay.... (and java has
anonymous classes, but they are heavy-weight and don't have proper closures
you find in dynamic languages, still they are there, and a good programmer
will know/have used at some point).

~~~
sunkencity
What I was trying to say was that maybe if you are not a great programmer well
rounded in the programming pantheon, it will be more of a revelation to you.
As a perl/php/java guy it took a while for closures to sink in for me, that
it's more niftiness involved than just a callback function. If one already
knows how to use an anonymous class it's no biggie I admit, but if you don't
it is :).

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cosmo7
I have the ratio / ass / 0 rule, where if a rule involves a ratio plucked out
of someone's ass then I have zero interest in it.

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noonespecial
I'm kind of glad surgeons don't subscribe to this philosophy...

