I recently read up on different apprenticeship patterns in the book Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. The book basically describes since aspiring software developers are like apprentices, they should focus on themselves and look for opportunities for personal development. As a software developer apprentice myself, there’s still much more I need to learn in the computer science world to strengthen my own knowledge and to apply that knowledge in the real world. Apprentices will run into problems and this book taught me about different apprenticeship patterns that I could apply to the problems I run into. These apprenticeship patterns will help anyone with shaping their mind into the right mindset to solve any problems they may run into. I did not really disagree with anything from the reading, it was more so that I found the reading was relatable since I am also starting out.

One of the apprenticeship patterns I found particularly interesting was “Emptying the Cup.” This pattern revolves around clearing your mind of everything you know and opening yourself to new and different approaches to the problem. Clearing the mind of everything you know would also get rid of the bad habits you may have picked up on when first learning the programming language, or maybe a solution to a problem that worked previously might not be the best and there might be a more efficient solution to the problem. The “Emptying the Cup” apprenticeship pattern is much like the metaphor “Thinking Outside the Box.” Rather than using traditional or old habits to solve a problem, you should drop the old habits and think differently and incorporate new perspectives to solve the problem. An apprenticeship pattern I found useful to me was “Walking the Long Road.” This pattern relates to me because I am at the beginning of the long road of my computer science career. I will hopefully learn and experience lots of new things as time goes on. Whatever happens, I will try to stay committed on the computer science path and expand my knowledge to its fullest potential.

From the blog Comfy Blog by Angus Cheng and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.