Skip to main content

Apprenticeship Pattern “Learn How You Fail”

For the final pattern that I will be writing about for this capstone, I wanted to write about something that I’ve felt for a while, but I did not know if my intuition was correct. I picked this one because of this line, “someone who has never failed at anything has either avoided pushing at the boundaries of their abilities or has learned to overlook their own mistakes.”

I feel that I have faced setback after setback in my life. I like to believe that it helps make me into a better, stronger, and more resilient person. When I struggle to learn something, I find that I understand it more thoroughly than if it came easy. It will also be much less likely to forget.

The struggle is something to be embraced. It should not be a reason to give up. On the contrary, it should be a sign you’re going in the right direction. It’s like a video game where you’re not progressing in the level if there’s no bad guys in the way.

I thought the “action” piece that the authors suggest is an apt one. The long and short of it is that to practice, you should use a text editor instead of an IDE to write an implementation of an IDE in one sitting. Since there is no IDE, it might catch the errors that you would have otherwise overlooked. I have not started studying for my Unix final, and this might be something I might try. However, I think we’re mostly doing things with shell scripts and the like, which is somewhat like a text editor anyway.

I think this pattern goes well what I wrote about in my retrospective just now. For as much as I enjoyed working with my scrum team, we were not perfect. Reflecting on how we fell short will ensure that the next team I work with will be even better.

I find I perform best in the areas that I have reflected the most. A part of it feels like neurotics, but it is important to do it. I reflect on most areas of my life, whether or not I am graded or paid. I feel that it is an important step to self-betterment on the way to self-fulfillment and mastery.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sprint 5 Retrospective (Capstone)

It is a shame that we are so close to the end of the semester. We were gaining so much momentum. It took us a while for us to get off the ground, but once we did, we never stopped gaining speed. I feel we will be able to keep this up through this last sprint. My hopes at the beginning of the semester for what we could accomplish were unrealistically high, but I am not disappointed with what we accomplished. We have not completed a full working component quite yet, but we are very close. I think our efforts are best spent finishing the one we are currently working on and doing it right. If we divided our efforts into starting something new, we run the risk of not fully completing anything. In the sage words of Ron Swanson, “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.” If we are able to get the tabs working beautifully, I will be happy with our effort. I have felt that our group has done a phenomenal job this sprint and every sprint before with our communication. We have a few ...

Mark Richards on the Evolution of Software Architecture

For this week’s blog on Software Architecture, I listened to Episode 3 of the “Software Architecture Radio” Podcast, which featured Mark Richards, an independent software architect. He has 32 years in the industry, with more than twenty years as a software architect.  They mostly talked about the evolution of software architecture. Although some of the things they talked about went a little over my head, I was able to pick up on the majority of what they were talking about.  He divided up the evolution of architecture into five stages. He talked about evolution happening in vertical and horizontal slices, that is within each layer and one layer affecting those above and around it. The layers were (1) hardware, (2) software, (3) human interaction, (4) social interaction, and (5) the environment, such as the internet of things. He said one thing in particular, need, drives change the fastest. As an aside, he also said that that’s the best way of teaching something i...

Sprint 4 Retrospective (Capstone)

This sprint, in my mind, one of the most important things that I was able to figure out was getting connected to AMPATH team through the Zeplin app. It seems that someone, perhaps accidentally, disconnected me from the group. Once reconnected, I was able to connect the rest of my group. Although it hardly was a difficult task, it is hard to overstate how important it is to be on the same page as the team you are building the product for. It could have prevented a lot of wasted time on our end, and it makes it more likely that they get the end product they want. Probably the most important thing I did in terms of learning about the tools we will be using was creating a “spike.” It is a new term I’ve learned that I will add to my lexicon, meaning to build a prototype of a product, diving deep to learn as much as you can. I touched upon it in my last apprenticeship patterns blog post, on “breakable patterns.” I failed to make a successful working prototype that did everythin...