Balanced
The Learning Spiral discussed the 4 basic methods of acquiring skill, knowledge, expertise and technical savvy in the IT field. The following lines are about what would happen if someone is totally biased towards only one of those methods and makes no or little use of the others.
Trial and Error
Trial and error makes one delve into the deepest realms of the IT world, specially when it comes to programming. For a hard core programmer, a low level programmer that uses Assembly or C, a hacker, an actively participating open source programmer and a systems programmer trial and error and learning from one’s own discoveries is the main source of technical savvy. The benefit if this method is that it can bring you to new heights and into territory than no one has ever treaded onto before you. You will discover new things, yet would of course rediscover things that others have already uncovered which makes trial and error a complete waist of time unless it is used in conjunction with and supplemented by other learning methods such as an IT community of technically supporting friends or technical books or for that matter courses. Trial and error is discovering things on your own. It is this very thing that makes you able to go deeper and discover new things not discovered by others, yet at the same moment it could alienate you and corner you in a mental rut unable to keep up with the many things others discover every day, or let’s say every minute. Trial and error gives innovation and self confidence but it does not provide speed. Relying on it alone will make you a computer geek that can do some clever tricks but that lacks the big picture and is incapable of moving swiftly.
Courses
Courses are cool. They let your learn quickly, they give you a boost. Of course the value of a course depends mostly on the expertise of the instructor both technically and with regards to ability facilitate the learning process. Though courses are a speedy way to gain technical skills in a new IT field they cannot be relied on alone. Courses are often good for starting to learn about a new technology. They put you on the start of the road, they can show you direction, but they do not take you far from there. After finishing a course, you have to go on from there to develop yourself or else you’ll stay at the beginning of the road only without advancement. Those who rely heavily on courses alone and forget the other three methods will never go deep into the field, will lack innovation and will not be able to handle real life situations or projects in the IT field. They will go no farther than the starting line.
Books
Books are great. They provide you with a wealth of information. Books can be good when starting on the new technology but are equally great when you have taken many steps in some technology and want to advance more, fill in the gaps, validate your knowledge and gain a balanced and complete grasp of the technology underhand. Books make you understand concepts, like do courses, and give you a sound technical foundation upon which to build. Understanding the foundation concepts makes you able to solve a wider range of problems, come up with solutions faster or solve problems that you would otherwise not be able to solve. Relying on trial and error and tips from friends alone to build your technical knowledge without having the sound theoretical foundation might make you take a hell of time and energy trying to find a solution and can even make you fail in solving it all together. That’s what makes books and courses cool and essential. Yet, books alone, though exciting at times and lovely to learn from, can deprive you of innovation and also quick fixes that you can learn from trial and error and from friends respectively.
Friends
Yeh, that’s the most fun part. Without friend you cannot survive. Not only in life, but in the technosphere. The greatest thing about friends is that they provide you with a human touch to things. You might find it hard to sift through endless amounts of information present on the web or in hundreds of large techno books, and would restrict your trial and error to the more promising paths of the thousand possible ones. Yet, friends can pinpoint to you how to best use a feature, keep you updated with the latest cool things or provide you with a balanced holistic view of things and tell where every part fits. Friends can also give you instant answers to deep problems you get across which they most probably have faced before and found the solution to using some means or another. Of course depending on friends alone will hurt your capacity for innovation and could let you slide in wrong paths away from the main road. But if you have a balanced mix of the four learning methods you can easily guard against this by not taking in all what your friends say for granted and keeping a critical eye on what they feed you with.
Every one of the main four methods of acquiring technical expertise and maintaining technical savvy has its strengths, yet relying heavily on of method alone and leaving the other three will do nothing but handicap you. Just remember that you probably cannot use them all at the same time, but will focus on one at a time then move on to the next then return back one more and revisit them all from the beginning in a continuous upward Learning Spiral.