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.