Cause and Effect
Does it happen to you? Learning a new thing confuses you during the process. The discomfort till you understand the new ideas, techniques- maybe understand just enough- drives you nuts.
I was learning about terraform recently. Plus nomad. I have not used these in the past and was getting quite annoyed as I was not making much headway. It was not rocket science but it was irritating.
This brings me to something that you may not agree with. The IT industry (particularly- but not just- the Indian IT industry) encourages getting by with just good enough understanding and knowledge. Like any industry, IT is driven by business and a perfect product/ solution does not exist. It will not exist even in future. Trying to have that at the cost of business will never make sense- at least for businesses. (Maybe governing bodies have some freedom- thanks EU). But for some of the things people do, they barely scratch the surface. The danger of going somewhat deep in any area may be that you become a more knowledgeable/ expert/ specialist in that area but are like fish out of water in others.
It is my firm belief that anything you provide your attention to becomes important to you. (So- if you have read this post till here- could I seek more attention from you, my dear reader? You haven’t read it this far, you say? Oh, ok then.) And attention being a limited resource, you can let only a few things become important to you. Business deadlines, working software, budget kind of constraints get more of your mind-space and take precedence over better software. Also better software being a bit of vague term with few (/ only a few) tangible properties/ metrics complicates it further. The higher ‘Power Distance Index’ in Indian/ Asian cultures also contributes, I think.
On the other hand, I worked with a few teams/ people in the past which had a sort of perfectionist mindset and attitude. The software still had shortcomings and not everything was perfect. But I think the attitude was what impressed me. At the risk of stereotyping, the teams were German/ Japanese. But a few people were Indian as well. So I think it is an individual quality in people and collective/ acquired way in teams.
Why did I get here when I started with the new learning discomfort? Because I ended up getting uncomfortable during the process- factors like deadlines/ visible progress, etc. started weighing more. So the discomfort was more because of these other factors than due to new territory of a somewhat simple technology. I think spending more time early on learning would have been better than getting it done. And this is not the first time I learned the lesson. And it won’t be the last. “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” I remember reading a quote from Khalil Gibran where he talks about the blurring ideas of cause and effect. I can’t find it now but I think he says something like- what we consider as the effect is actually the cause and cause the effect- something like that. I have felt this more than once- at times even in an abstract sort of way. And at times more concretely. Anyway, please don’t mistake this as preaching from a higher ground. The writing tone may give that impression. Nor is this some sort of a pessimistic view. This space is just to let some thoughts out so they don’t keep occupying the mind. Overall, things are the way they are because that’s the way are. But also worth noting is the fact that things ‘become’ the way they are. So if we can improve, we should.