Marcus - > Among engineers, especially young ones, one way the ego-centric individual > presents herself is via Not Invented Here (NIH). She simply cannot imagine > studying and using another work. The tribe permits it so long as the tribe > can be impermeable to criticism and that they can get her to associate the > work with the group. It doesn't matter if it is grossly wasteful of time or > money. Also NIH superficially makes the engineer appear more instrumental > because she is solving a simpler problem than if she rationalized the > state-of-the-art before beginning her venture.
I've done my time mentoring aspiring engineers. For the longest time, I found a certain "reverse psychology" to work well. Instead of assigning them to (find and) learn and use a package/library/circuit/mechanism and have them resist and subvert that assignment (like conjuring their own point-solution to a subset of the real problem), I found that if I assigned them the problem of conjuring their own algorithm and (re)implementing it, they would go bashing around trying to find a shortcut (e.g. someone else having already studied the problem well and found optimal solutions). Even for myself, I've found that if a library/package/tool seems intractable, if I go off and try to hamfist the same thing without the leverage I come to appreciate more of the nuances of the problem as well as being humbled into a new kind of patience by trying to solve it "the hard way". - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
