Why Negative comments are better than positive ones
By Steve Schnepp on Monday, 26 May 2008, 15:01 - general - Permalink
Why Negative comments are better than positive ones If you are reading this
blog and thinking Hey ! What a He's just talking nonsense...
please
don't walk away in horror. It would be very much appreciated if you drop me a
comment about what is wrong in my post instead. I actually
prefer to have negative comments than positive ones... at
least when they are well argumented.
As a matter of fact, we mostly learn by our mistakes. If you do something and it works, you are really happy but you don't know why it works. The next time you have to do something quite similar you are tempted to change the least possible in order not to be disappointed. This leads to the infamous Cargo Cult Programming effect. Whereas if it doesn't work you spend some times, but just learned something that you can subsequently reuse.
It's actually by been challenged that you make the most interesting progress. I nevertheless agree that when in isolation your raw productivity is much bigger than when being part of a team. The reason if quite obvious : since you don't have to argue with others, you can spend all your time doing useful stuff. The main problem with this approach is that the real goal (where you really should go), isn't necessarily where you think it is. So you just might go very fast, but aiming the wrong goal. Sometimes the very fact explaining something to someone (that didn't even disagree) can show you the internal problems of your way of thinking.
It's actually the convincing-battle that you have to fight with your audience/co-workers/etc that leads to the most interesting solutions. We are all humans, and each had different experiences, hence different point of views. So the real cleverness is to be able to take the ladder of your opinions, climb with them on the shoulder of giants and give the feed back your fellow giants what your new point of view gives you to see. I really insist on the feed-back stage, knowledge is something you can even increase by giving it, since it usually makes you think ways that you would not have explored normally.
So I do write in this blog with my own convictions. It is certainly not the universal truth, but it's my very own vision of it. If you feel that I'm wrong, feel free to tell me : I don't say I'll agree with you, but it may be a very interesting battle that might even elevate both of us.
Comments
You say "I actually prefer to have negative comments than positive ones... at least when they are well argumented"
You are (I think) mixing up "negative comment" and "criticism".
A negative comment that is well argumented is called a constructive criticism. That's a criticism you can build on, by opposition to destructive one that don't give you anything to improve.
I think everyone agrees to the fact that constructive criticism is good!
Mistakes in isolation are the worst when you don't know much about the problem/the language/the algorithm/the business, you go full speed into the wall.
On the contrary, a Master in isolation WILL achieve high productivity (that is, until the next paradigm change, that he won’t see from his ivory tower).
Another fact is that you really learn when you burn yourself. Of course, letting others criticize your work is learning their experience without getting burnt yourself. But if you always follow the advices from the others, you may avoid valuable lessons: knowing WHO are the real gurus whose advice really count; when knowing that YOU are right and all the others aren’t; and recognizing that they were right indeed, but you had to try.