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on RTFM-ing
May. 2nd, 2006 09:34 amI spent a long time yesterday playing with the new inform stuff. I was pretty proud of myself for having put together a small piece of what I hope will be a pretty nifty game eventually, and I realized when talking with Todd about some things that I have a very different approach to learning new techy skills than he does.
He sat down and started reading through all the documentation that came with the IDE and language, walking through the examples in order. I sat down, opened the program, and started trying to do stuff. It's not that I don't value the documentation - anything but! It's also not that I am so overweeningly confident that I think I can competantly accomplish something without consulting the documentation; on the contrary, I know damned well that I don't know how to do anything and it'll be a struggle. But in my experience, it'll be a struggle with or without reading through the manual cover to cover, and if I read the manual and then struggle like crazy, I feel stupid and I'm likely to quit.
I know, logically, that I can't be expected to pick things up on the first pass, and that just having read the documentation doesn't make it easy. But in my heart of hearts, after reading through things and saying "well, that makes sense. That works. That's simple. I get it now" I really do expect to be able to do... well, just about anything I want to do. And that doesn't happen. Of course it doesn't happen. So my way of coping with this moderately defective notion that I've got about "well, if you've read through how to do something you must know how to do it" is to just skip the reading through part, so that my confidence is bolstered rather than shattered. Yes, this means that I struggle with things that are spelled out in a really obvious way in the documentation, and I have to consult and look things up pretty frequently. But it also means that I don't walk away so secure in the strength of the manual and in my own reading comprehension that the first time I find something that isn't cleanly spelled out or that I misunderstood, I feel like crying in frustration and rage.
So, yes. I don't read the f-ing manual. This Cisquirk of the day brought to you by the letter J, the number 7 and the fruit Papaya.
He sat down and started reading through all the documentation that came with the IDE and language, walking through the examples in order. I sat down, opened the program, and started trying to do stuff. It's not that I don't value the documentation - anything but! It's also not that I am so overweeningly confident that I think I can competantly accomplish something without consulting the documentation; on the contrary, I know damned well that I don't know how to do anything and it'll be a struggle. But in my experience, it'll be a struggle with or without reading through the manual cover to cover, and if I read the manual and then struggle like crazy, I feel stupid and I'm likely to quit.
I know, logically, that I can't be expected to pick things up on the first pass, and that just having read the documentation doesn't make it easy. But in my heart of hearts, after reading through things and saying "well, that makes sense. That works. That's simple. I get it now" I really do expect to be able to do... well, just about anything I want to do. And that doesn't happen. Of course it doesn't happen. So my way of coping with this moderately defective notion that I've got about "well, if you've read through how to do something you must know how to do it" is to just skip the reading through part, so that my confidence is bolstered rather than shattered. Yes, this means that I struggle with things that are spelled out in a really obvious way in the documentation, and I have to consult and look things up pretty frequently. But it also means that I don't walk away so secure in the strength of the manual and in my own reading comprehension that the first time I find something that isn't cleanly spelled out or that I misunderstood, I feel like crying in frustration and rage.
So, yes. I don't read the f-ing manual. This Cisquirk of the day brought to you by the letter J, the number 7 and the fruit Papaya.
