Asp Forum - Re: Ruby mentoring

Eivind Eklund

5/6/2008 7:47:00 AM

On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 4:59 PM, Michael T. Richter <ttmrichter@gmail.com> wrote:
> What I'd like to propose is a Ruby mentoring program for newcomer like luka
> luka. A mentor would basically be a single point of contact for Ruby
> questions. If, for example, I were to be luka luka's mentor, he would email
> me with his questions and I would answer those I know the answers to and
> research the answers (including forwarding the question here) to any I
> didn't know.

I think the problem is that people won't know when they're good
mentors and not. I'm sure that if I chose to mentor, I'd sometimes
give a lousy answer to a question *while thinking I was giving a good
answer and had no need to do research*. In fact, psychology seems to
tell us that we're most likely to think we're competent when we're
not: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/01/18/M...

As an example of this, look at the recent "Integer Regexp" thread.
Apart from sharing the concern about using nil for infinity, I was
fairly happy with the contribution I made to that thread. I saw it as
a simple, easy solution to the problem domain, and would have felt no
need to send that off to the mailing list if I was mentoring - the
solution seemed obvious, and I didn't really think that there was any
other relevant way to do it. Yet, if I had been a mentor and had done
that, I would (A) have missed that it didn't seem to be so obvious to
everybody (as several other solutions were proposed and nobody else
posted the solution I gave), and (B) would have missed Ara Howard's
beautiful solution based on hacking the existing RegExp engine.

So, I was incompetent in that area and thought I was quite competent.
And, being shown my own incompetence in such ways is what I learn most
from - including seeing other people's "obvious" solutions. So, I
personally feel that this, while sometimes repetitive, is one of the
most productive uses of the mailing list.

Eivind.

comp.lang.ruby

Re: Ruby mentoring

Eivind Eklund

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