There's been a lot of talk lately about how mastering, well, anything, takes ten thousand hours. It comes from Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers: The Story of Success. I'm wondering how true that may be in our case?
I got my pilot's license in less than fifty hours. I had demonstrated by that point the proper skills and to a sufficient level to be deemed safe enough to fly unwitting people off to faraway adventures, with a high probability of getting us all back home, again. Fifty hours. But I can tell you that I was a much, much better pilot at 200hrs.
I was easily better than four times the flier, with four times the hours. I am sure that if I was able to continue racking up time, by the time I got to ten thousand hours, I'd be pretty damned good. It's not linear—I wouldn't be fifty times better, but I would bet that I would notice the difference, if nobody else did.
I've mentioned before that when I play guitar, I can hear the seventeen year old me laughing at the fifty year old me. But I figured out the seventeen year old me practiced and played about five hours per day, nearly every day, for a period of about two years, and about two hours per day nearly every day for about a year before that. So that's about twenty-five hundred hours of guitar playing, or a quarter of the way there. No wonder I was good. Had I stuck with it through the 1980s and 1990s, you might have heard of me by now.
But I wonder if this is transferable to the Web? How can anyone become an expert at building Web pages, if you need ten thousand hours? Is there really anything to learn from the umpty-millionth <p> tag you put on a page?
There are only a limited number of tags we use every day. There are only a few tags that we use maybe once a month or three or four times per year (I don't think I have ever used the <dd> tag, for instance, and I've been doing this since 1993). Once you have mastered HTML to some degree, you probably move on to Cascading Style Sheets.
There, you have several dozen property-value pairs to learn for several dozen selectors (basically the most-often used HTML tags). That is all quite a hill to climb. But here's where it falls apart, for me.
Ten thousand hours of eight-hour days is twelve hundred and fifty days. Given a typical working year of 2000hrs (8x5x50), that's five years of heads-down markup and design, with no sick days, no all-day meetings and no staring absently at the tree outside the window—and especially with no accounting for shopping on eBay, searching Facebook for old sweeties or looking up things in Wikipedia.
And here's my problem. In any random five years there are huge changes in the Web, the way we work, the tools we use and so on. How much of that transfers over? How much of the work I did in HTML v3.2 counted, when HTML 4.01 became the choice? How much of what I did in HomeSite was I really able to carry over into Dreamweaver? And how much of what I learned of Dreamweaver MX 2000 am I still using, today?
At some point, I stopped laying out pages in tables. At some point, I quit using <font> tags. Somewhere along the line, I learned to include title attributes on links, and alt text in images.
Realistically, the way I work today, this week or this month is how I have worked for only a couple of hundred hours. Some parts of it stretch back to the 1990s, sure, but not many, and fewer with every passing year. HTML becomes XHTML and probably soon will become HTML5. CSS is moving into CSS3, now. Browsers are still rolling out about a once a year, but there are only three or four that matter so it's a new one only every so many months. JavaScript improves and so do the libraries that techniques like JQuery depend upon.
It's all still in a great deal of flux.
So, according to Outliers, will any of us ever be any good?
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The Lost
I lost a favorite book bag, last week. Actually, that's when I noticed it was missing. I actually lost it months ago during our recent move. I brought it to the new house, another damned Thing from the apartment, and casually, absently, placed it on top of a pile of boxes near the front of a closet.
If we had done a better job of un-packing, we would have had fewer boxes in front of, well, in front of everything, and I probably would have found it.
My first thought was that it was probably in "this" room. Then probably somewhere in "that" room. Then maybe it was out in the garage. I tried to place it within the apartment, and locate boxes of flotsam and jetsam from that strata, but didn't find it.
My first solution was to order another. It was a Lands' End Square-Rigger Canvas Attache Case, in Green, trimmed in leather. Beautifully made, sturdy, rugged. It was featured in full-page ads in Lands' End's catalogs for more than twenty years. I went to their Web site, but could not find it anywhere. I Googled "Lands' End Canvas Attache" which got me a skillion hits, most of which were product reviews saying how great the little case was. Finally, I found one article that talked about it in the past tense, saying Lands' End no longer offered it.
Well, that's just awful.
That would be like Dairy Queen deciding they could save money by not putting that little curl at the top of their ice cream cones. It would be like Gibson Guitars deciding they didn't need to make their Les Paul models, any more. It would be like Chevrolet deciding they could do without their Corvette. For a generation, the Land's End catalog talked about how great their knit golf shirts were, what made their Oxford office shirts so great, and how wonderful their Square-Rigger canvas attache cases were. In the early 1980s, they even modified the attache case so it could be used as a computer case, in a pinch.
I was crushed. I found one in Black, on eBay, and bid on it. A couple of hours later I had won it and it is now on its way to my house. So, of course, this morning I found my original Green one, the one I've owned for ten years, jammed between a couple of boxes near the closet in a room full of boxes.
There are lessons here.
Probably the first is that we've lived in this house for weeks, now and we should be done un-packing! The second is that we should be more deliberate in where we put things. Don't name a word processing document full of Web design ideas something that doesn't include the words "Web", "Design" and "Ideas" in the document name. And don't place it in a Folder named "General Stuff" or "Ideas to Work On" or something like that. That Folder should be named "Web Design Ideas".
I should have put my bag in a closet, or near my desk, where I could see it and remember it.
Oh, for Google, and for Spotlight on the Macintosh, which seemingly find anything, anywhere. Until there's a Google for the household, be more careful and plan accordingly.
If we had done a better job of un-packing, we would have had fewer boxes in front of, well, in front of everything, and I probably would have found it.
My first thought was that it was probably in "this" room. Then probably somewhere in "that" room. Then maybe it was out in the garage. I tried to place it within the apartment, and locate boxes of flotsam and jetsam from that strata, but didn't find it.
My first solution was to order another. It was a Lands' End Square-Rigger Canvas Attache Case, in Green, trimmed in leather. Beautifully made, sturdy, rugged. It was featured in full-page ads in Lands' End's catalogs for more than twenty years. I went to their Web site, but could not find it anywhere. I Googled "Lands' End Canvas Attache" which got me a skillion hits, most of which were product reviews saying how great the little case was. Finally, I found one article that talked about it in the past tense, saying Lands' End no longer offered it.
Well, that's just awful.
That would be like Dairy Queen deciding they could save money by not putting that little curl at the top of their ice cream cones. It would be like Gibson Guitars deciding they didn't need to make their Les Paul models, any more. It would be like Chevrolet deciding they could do without their Corvette. For a generation, the Land's End catalog talked about how great their knit golf shirts were, what made their Oxford office shirts so great, and how wonderful their Square-Rigger canvas attache cases were. In the early 1980s, they even modified the attache case so it could be used as a computer case, in a pinch.
I was crushed. I found one in Black, on eBay, and bid on it. A couple of hours later I had won it and it is now on its way to my house. So, of course, this morning I found my original Green one, the one I've owned for ten years, jammed between a couple of boxes near the closet in a room full of boxes.
There are lessons here.
Probably the first is that we've lived in this house for weeks, now and we should be done un-packing! The second is that we should be more deliberate in where we put things. Don't name a word processing document full of Web design ideas something that doesn't include the words "Web", "Design" and "Ideas" in the document name. And don't place it in a Folder named "General Stuff" or "Ideas to Work On" or something like that. That Folder should be named "Web Design Ideas".
I should have put my bag in a closet, or near my desk, where I could see it and remember it.
Oh, for Google, and for Spotlight on the Macintosh, which seemingly find anything, anywhere. Until there's a Google for the household, be more careful and plan accordingly.
Monday, August 16, 2010
At Least There Will Be Cool
What a nice little vacation, huh?
Sorry, I got caught up in a whole bunch of little things. And some of them really were very little, but still distracting, and in one way or another the time spent in blogging was sucked away. There were a few big things, too. We bought a house and moved. My little sister had her tonsils out, got a huge infection which turned into sepsis and ended up losing a foot to amputation. And always, it was hot. How was your summer?
So, now it's late summer and the media is full of Back To School. I always get a sense of nostalgia, and a sense of hope, as the days start to pick up speed in their getting shorter. I love that sense of possibility I get from looking at a brand new, clean, totally blank notebook. All of those empty pages, soon to be filled with all kinds of new knowledge. Notes on classroom lectures, page numbers to be read or other assignments, little back-of-the-envelope budgets to see if I can spring for a hot coffee. It's all good.
Most of my associations with Fall are good ones. I have a birthday coming up the end of September. There's a British Car Show held every year around that time. Continuing to take classes makes me feel like I am making progress through Life, however bogus that may actually be. One Day, the promise holds, I'll Be Smart! And I'll have a receipt! I'll be able to prove it! Then, they will have to throw money at me! We'll see.
New movies come out in the Fall. A lot of really good shows that don't fit into the Summer Blockbuster mold, but can't wait for the holidays, will be released soon. Television used to roll out all new seasons the way the car companies did, but both now seem content to release product as it becomes available. Pity. I remember we used to stay home in the evenings for a whole week, to check out all of the new shows on ABC or NBC or CBS (all we had, back then) and pass judgement on whether or not they deserved our further scrutiny. But I am looking forward to a few TV shows.
I used to get new clothes at the end of every summer. That's gone, now. We used to move in the mid-to-late summer. That's over, too.
What do you hope to accomplish, in the last third of the year? Are you looking into new technologies? Or maybe picking up a new job? Paying off a credit card, or planning on a Big Deal for next year?
Over the last several weeks, I've gotten a new office, so I've gotten new coworkers. I've built out some new training and I'll be delivering that for the next year or so. And I've sat in on meetings about The Future… ("oocher… oocher… oocher…). I remain convinced that The Future is going to be a great place to live, even as I become more uncertain of my own place within it.
Our current model of communication, Templates supported by the Dreamweaver interface, may be coming to an end. Doubtless there were scribes, very good scribes, who shed tears at the end of the papyrus era. But there are some compelling technical and economic reasons behind the change, and I anticipate that we will be doing much less with Dreamweaver in the next version of the Template design, and in those going forward, than we have in the past. Change is a mother, huh? All of those keyboard shortcuts? They will eventually evaporate through disuse. I don't think I could debug a RedRyder communications script today the way I could in 1989, either, though.
There are all kinds of advances in established technologies. And we have seen many of them organized in ways they haven't been, before, to good effect. The iPhone continues to be popular and the iPad is still coming on strong. Why would the incoming Freshman of 2015 seriously consider loading herself down with 40lbs of books with pencil and pen markings and highlighted passages—books the bookstore won't accept for return at the end of the semester—when she can download all of her books, and more, to her iPad, and carry that around in her purse?
New challenges, new opportunities, new economics and always new weather. It's all coming. Are you going to be ready for it?
Sorry, I got caught up in a whole bunch of little things. And some of them really were very little, but still distracting, and in one way or another the time spent in blogging was sucked away. There were a few big things, too. We bought a house and moved. My little sister had her tonsils out, got a huge infection which turned into sepsis and ended up losing a foot to amputation. And always, it was hot. How was your summer?
So, now it's late summer and the media is full of Back To School. I always get a sense of nostalgia, and a sense of hope, as the days start to pick up speed in their getting shorter. I love that sense of possibility I get from looking at a brand new, clean, totally blank notebook. All of those empty pages, soon to be filled with all kinds of new knowledge. Notes on classroom lectures, page numbers to be read or other assignments, little back-of-the-envelope budgets to see if I can spring for a hot coffee. It's all good.
Most of my associations with Fall are good ones. I have a birthday coming up the end of September. There's a British Car Show held every year around that time. Continuing to take classes makes me feel like I am making progress through Life, however bogus that may actually be. One Day, the promise holds, I'll Be Smart! And I'll have a receipt! I'll be able to prove it! Then, they will have to throw money at me! We'll see.
New movies come out in the Fall. A lot of really good shows that don't fit into the Summer Blockbuster mold, but can't wait for the holidays, will be released soon. Television used to roll out all new seasons the way the car companies did, but both now seem content to release product as it becomes available. Pity. I remember we used to stay home in the evenings for a whole week, to check out all of the new shows on ABC or NBC or CBS (all we had, back then) and pass judgement on whether or not they deserved our further scrutiny. But I am looking forward to a few TV shows.
I used to get new clothes at the end of every summer. That's gone, now. We used to move in the mid-to-late summer. That's over, too.
What do you hope to accomplish, in the last third of the year? Are you looking into new technologies? Or maybe picking up a new job? Paying off a credit card, or planning on a Big Deal for next year?
Over the last several weeks, I've gotten a new office, so I've gotten new coworkers. I've built out some new training and I'll be delivering that for the next year or so. And I've sat in on meetings about The Future… ("oocher… oocher… oocher…). I remain convinced that The Future is going to be a great place to live, even as I become more uncertain of my own place within it.
Our current model of communication, Templates supported by the Dreamweaver interface, may be coming to an end. Doubtless there were scribes, very good scribes, who shed tears at the end of the papyrus era. But there are some compelling technical and economic reasons behind the change, and I anticipate that we will be doing much less with Dreamweaver in the next version of the Template design, and in those going forward, than we have in the past. Change is a mother, huh? All of those keyboard shortcuts? They will eventually evaporate through disuse. I don't think I could debug a RedRyder communications script today the way I could in 1989, either, though.
There are all kinds of advances in established technologies. And we have seen many of them organized in ways they haven't been, before, to good effect. The iPhone continues to be popular and the iPad is still coming on strong. Why would the incoming Freshman of 2015 seriously consider loading herself down with 40lbs of books with pencil and pen markings and highlighted passages—books the bookstore won't accept for return at the end of the semester—when she can download all of her books, and more, to her iPad, and carry that around in her purse?
New challenges, new opportunities, new economics and always new weather. It's all coming. Are you going to be ready for it?
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