Some of the best advice I’ve received

Friday, January 19th, 2007

X-ray of Homer Simpson's Brain Sometime in the early nineties–when I was a young lad in high school–I had a friend who rekindled my interest in computers. Of all the conversations we had one thing that he told me remains burned into my brain to this day, “don’t be afraid…”. Now I’ve put the ellipsis there because I can’t quite remember exactly what the phrase was, but we were talking about computers and my fear of breaking something while exploring them. His advice was basically that you’ll never learn if you’re afraid of doing something wrong. The essence of which I’ve realized is that fear will inhibit learning.

Fearest not and thou shalt learn

I can’t tell you how often I’ve looked at an article or a spec and thought to myself, “Oh my God, this is insane, I can’t understand this,” and it’s the times that I’ve plowed through and actually tried reading through it that I’ve learned something. The same thing happens whenever I read some of the more brilliant members of the web development community’s blogs and think to myself “what the hell are they talking about?” My first instinct is always to just close the window and move on. “This stuff’s way over your head Ara.” But by persisting, I’m able to fight that urge to ignore the difficult and actually learn something. Or at the very least get a primer on the subject for the next time I come across a similar article on the same thing.

I’ve come to realize that it has a lot to do with how you see yourself. If you’re a fatalist at heart and think that all that complicated stuff is for geniuses, you’ll forever remain a newbie. And I’ve got news for you, the more you learn the more the magic fades and you realize that a large number of those “geniuses” weren’t geniuses at all, just more learned. If you commit to not being afraid of a subject that’s “too complicated” and decide to dive head first into it instead, the worst that can happen is that you’ll learn something. And the more you play around with the stuff, the more you’ll learn. Before you know it, you’ll be the one writing the articles.

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5 Comments

Luke says:
January 19th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Yup. My attitude is: “If it is technology related, I can learn it”. It’s just a matter of breaking it down into manageable pieces. You start at the bottom, and they you move up until you understand the whole thing.

But I guess this applies to just about everything in life. Whenever I fear the unknown I remind myself the Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert’s Dune books:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Fear is the mind killer indeed.
TOMAS says:
January 19th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Very well written post Ara, and cool quote Luke! I too have found myself avoiding things due to the fear of the unknown, only to find that it was way easier to figure out than I had imagined. Sometimes you just have to roll up your sleeves and start digging around, in the end you will hopefully end up better off than when you started.
Carl de Billy says:
January 22nd, 2007 at 10:48 am
Great post. I feel exactly the same when it’s time to explore a new innovative technology or to read an advanced paper.
tsk says:
February 19th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Great article! Simple, concise and widely true. I see myself in it and, by chance, I came about your website in my quest for learning JavaScrip.

I dreaded JS for a long time and focused on Html, CSS, PHP and others. I was amazed by the great implementations of AXAJ but I’m also dedicated to usability and accessibility so I had the misconception that JS will just wreak havoc on any of my work.

I am just scratching the surface of learning JS right now but I find a lot of useful techniques that render my previous conception utterly false. I see the great potential of JavaScript and I wish to thank all those that take the time to share logical and useful information on how to integrate it in projects and make the best use of it.

PS: I got here for “Understanding and solving the JavaScript/CSS entanglement phenomenon” and found a lot of interesting stuff.

Thanks for making learning JS a lot less scary.
Ara Pehlivanian says:
February 19th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
tsk: Hey, no problem. Glad to be of service! :-)