Jon Udell at InfoWorld had some cool remarks about the IT trade this month.
Basically, he’s just saying that IT people don’t memorize everything about computers, they just know how to find information when they need it. That’s how I operate all the time; in fact, I think that’s what I told my present supervisor in my job interview close to three years ago.
All the same, it’s worth saying, because many folks still have the idea that if you’re a computer geek you “know” everything about computers, right off the top of your head. Not the case; I’m guessing there’s not one tech in a hundred with that sort of off-the-cuff knowledge.
Actually, I think it would be a waste of energy to even strive to remember that much; I’d rather just look it up when I need it. Why? Because things change so quickly. How would I feel know if I had spent hours memorizing every little tweak and fix for Windows 95? Like I had wasted valuable time, that’s how I would feel.
In the same way, even though I haven’t programmed extensively with Perl or Python, I’m not uncomfortable saying that I “know” those languages, or at least that I’m familiar with them. Would I want a language reference handy if I started to work on something with those languages? You bet I would.
But I sure don’t plan to memorize it.
