Summary of the Pattern:

The “White Belt” pattern emphasizes the importance of approaching new learning experiences with a beginner’s mind, regardless of your level of expertise. It suggests setting aside previous knowledge and preconceptions to fully absorb new information. Drawing analogies from various fields like family therapy and programming, the pattern illustrates the benefits of adopting a mindset of not knowing. By embracing ignorance and being open to making mistakes, individuals can accelerate their learning and gain deeper insights.

Reaction:

As someone who takes pride in my skills, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing I already know the best way to approach a problem. However, the “White Belt” pattern reminds me that there’s always more to learn and different perspectives to consider.

What to Do:

The pattern suggests practical steps to implement its principles. For example, it recommends trying to implement a program in a language with a different paradigm, or learning from someone in a different technological community to understand their perspectives. These actions challenge one’s comfort zone and encourage embracing new ways of thinking.

What I Found Thought-Provoking:

The analogy of wearing a white belt, signifying a beginner’s level, is powerful. It reminds me that true mastery comes from a willingness to continuously learn and adapt. Additionally, the idea of consciously unlearning and relearning is intriguing. It requires humility and courage but promises significant growth.

Changes in Thinking:

This pattern has reminded me in the importance of continuous learning and humility in any area of life. I aim to approach new challenges with a more open mind, ready to embrace the discomfort of being a beginner again. Instead of seeing setbacks as failures, I now view them as opportunities for growth.

Disagreements:

While I don’t disagree with the core principles of the pattern, I recognize that fully embracing a beginner’s mindset can be challenging, especially in environments that value expertise and efficiency. However, I do see a view of balance on where it can be useful to listen to new ideas/appreaches while incoperating past ideas. As I do not think the White Belt pattern suggest to blondly accept any and all new information without any rebuttals or input.

In conclusion, the “White Belt” pattern serves as a powerful reminder to approach learning with humility and openness. By unlearning and relearning, we can break through plateaus and continue our journey toward mastery.

From the blog CS@Worcester – CS: Start to Finish by mrjfatal and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week’s blog, I decided to write about the pattern called “The Long Road” from Chapter 3. My previous blogs touched a bit on the contents of this pattern so I decided to discuss what the authors suggest for this pattern. In this pattern, the situation that is presented relates to how your aspirations to become a master software developer conflict with the expectations of others and how “Conventional wisdom tells you to take the highest-paying job and the first promotion you can get your hands on, to stop programming and get onto more important work rather than slowly building up your skills”. 

The solution that is presented is to first accept the judgments you may receive from others to go against the status quo and then to stay focused on the long term. During the journey you will gain quite a bit of skills and knowledge; it is a long one so you need to prepare for it by drawing your own map. The text mentions “ you should keep in mind the expectation that you will be a working software developer even when you are middle-aged. Let this influence the jobs you take and the scope of your ambitions. If you’re still going to be working in 20 years’ time, then you can do anything”. You will be able to catch up to anyone in terms of skills in the decades that you will work and you may just pass them. Before reading this pattern I never really thought about just how long I will be working in the field. As I have discussed in many of my blogs for this class, I have been working on developing myself professionally and learning from other developers; as I have progressed, I have thought about the possibility of not being the weakest on the team so I agree that it is realistic to surpass people during your long journey.

The pattern really stresses the idea that instead of counting the days to retirement, a craftsman will willingly work until their final decades. You should thoughtfully work on developing your craft over many years. The idea of taking the long road is the foundation for a successful apprenticeship along with self-assessment. I couldn’t find anything in this section that I could disagree with. It definitely made me think of what I want to get out of this long journey because I didn’t take the time to think about it in-depth before.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Live Laugh Code by Shamarah Ramirez and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Confront Your Ignorance

This pattern is about confronting your ignorance. After going through the “Expose your ignorance” pattern, where you identify gaps in your skillset, the next step is to confront those gaps. The main problem that comes from this pattern is that there are techniques and tools that need to be learned, but the process of actually learning these techniques in unclear. Some of these may be techniques that everyone already knows, so there is an expectation that everyone be competent in that area.

The solution to this pattern, with the list generated from “Expose your ignorance”, is to pick an item from that list and actively fill the gaps for that item. How this can be done is a matter of preference. Some prefer to research everything they can about a topic, such as introductory articles and forums. Others prefer a more hands on approach by going straight into the topic by building a simple project. Although confronting your ignorance is mostly an individual task, asking mentors and experienced people is important to learn what information they can share with you. Asking mentors can also be beneficial as they may have learned tricks that they found themselves that may not be discoverable through documentation.

As mentioned before, this pattern is do be done after exposing your ignorance. Exposing your ignorance is a critical step because it makes the gaps in your knowledge public, which makes your team aware of those gaps and your learning ability. Having your gaps be on display for your team encourages an environment where failure and learning are acceptable as they both play a large role in an apprentice transitioning to become a journeyman and so on.

Conclusion

This pattern is helpful to me because confronting my ignorance is something I struggle with at times. The pattern states that exposing your ignorance without confronting can lead to excessive humility and helplessness which are feelings I have had in the past, so this pattern helps to give some encouragement to start confronting that gaps in my knowledge. After reading the patterns “Expose your ignorance” and “Confront your ignorance”, I feel much more confident in the future on how I can improve my skills in a methodical manner.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Zack's CS Blog by ztram1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

In this blog post, I want to talk about the “Record What You Learn” pattern from the “Apprenticeship Patterns” textbook by David H. Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. The premise presented in the pattern’s introduction,

“You learn the same lessons again and again. They never seem to stick… You remember doing very similar things in the past, but the exact details escape you.”

, captures some of the feelings that I’ve been having as our development group continues our work on Thea’s Pantry. I remember doing so much backend HTTP server work last semester, but I haven’t retained the lessons as well as I wanted to, and I feel like I’m repeatedly reviewing old material.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how well I’ve been nourishing my writing abilities – I stopped keeping a daily journal some time ago, and I’ve noticed that I haven’t been taking as many handwritten notes in my classes as I used to. The first reason I can think of for not wanting to stick to the habit is that I haven’t been exactly clicking with the record-keeping tools that I’ve been using. At first, I wanted to keep digital personal journals with tools like Microsoft Word or a journaling app on my Android device because I liked the idea of having as much space to write as much I wanted, without having to think about reaching a physical “end of the book”. However, I’ve realized over time that there are parts of the electronic writing process, like the glow of the monitor and the distractions of other applications, that can make it harder to concentrate on personal writing as opposed to pen and paper.

I’ve also been reflecting on my writing practices in addition to the tools I’ve been using. I’ve known for some time that I would be helped by keeping records of the things I’ve learned about computers, networking, and software development in my own writing, but I just haven’t known how to start or structure a collection of notes that I want to return to and reference in the future. One solution offered by the “Record What You Learn” pattern is to utilize a personal wiki to organize and store your notes. While I’ve been thinking I want to return to pen and paper for more personal writing, I think that a digital tool like a wiki would be a great choice to organize knowledge-based writing and references to further learning resources. The review process is also an essential part of using the “Record What You Learn” pattern. The authors emphasize the importance of rereading your material: “Your notebook, blog, or wiki should be a nursery, not a graveyard—lessons should be born from this record, rather than going there to die.”

From the blog CS@Worcester – Michael's Programming Blog by mikesprogrammingblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Summary:

This pattern describes growing your skills by challenging yourself with any opportunity that is given to you. Whether it’s done through taking on bigger or more complex problems or working with larger teams, there is always something to learn by trying something new. This also means seeking out projects to work on to build a portfolio and expand your skills.

Reflection:

For someone who started programming java in 2007, my portfolio is pretty barren. This comes down to two factors. Lost old files, and failing to start new projects. This pattern is one that I can definitely relate to the problem of feeling like I have plateaued. My eyes are opened to the truth as I get more exposure to the world of software development. If I am going to gain new skills I need to actively seek projects that push the boundaries of what I already know. I have always wanted to develop an application, but without any clear idea of what kind of application I wanted to make. This has always paralyzed me from actually learning how to develop an application. There are two clear solutions I can think of right now based off of two other patterns I have written about in the past. Following the pattern of “Find Mentors,” I could have sought out the guidance of a mentor and asked for ideas for projects that would develop my skills. The second pattern of “Breakable Toys,” gives me the option of just making an application for the sake of having a tool I can use. Making a breakable toy for an application would be a great way for me to jump into the deep end as far as pushing my knowledge of software development.

The other part of challenging myself is working with larger teams. Up until last year all of the projects I have worked on have been solo. Last semester, where I was partnered with another classmate, was one of my first exposures to developing large projects with someone else, and the challenges that come with it. Teamwork is crucial as anywhere I go in my career I will be working on a team, so being able to work together and communicate are important skills to develop. And just like learning from actually developing code, these skills will be built by actually working in larger teams.

From the blog CS@Worcester – CS Learning by kbourassa18 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

As my final Apprenticeship Pattern blog post for my capstone course, I found it fitting to write about the “Share What You Learn” pattern. The idea is fairly simple, if you are gaining knowledge on a topic, you should be able to share that knowledge with others effectively to foster mutual growth, which results in everyone building on their ‘craftsmanship,’ which further results in better products from everyone involved.

We don’t work in a vacuum by ourselves, and so communication is incredibly important. We will always be working on teams of software developers, and even in our personal projects, we are working with information that we are informed about from the entirety of the software development ‘community.’ As such, learning to communicate your ideas and share your knowledge is always great for your team.

Different people have different specializations, and in software development, we have our own specializations and interests within this field, and it is beneficial to not only contribute your expertise to the project you are working on with your team, but also share things about that expertise to get everyone on the same board with what you are doing, and perhaps foster growth in them as people and the project as a whole.

The intersting thing is that you can also learn from others’ specializations and expertise when you are sharing your own, and you can also build on your knowledge from ideas and suggestions that others may make when hearing your ideas. It’s a bounce back and forth.

I think everyone has probably experienced this to some extent, even in small circumstances. As the authors mention, simply knowing one small thing more than another person allows you the opportunity to inform that person about your piece of knowledge, and that fosters growth, no matter how small. I know that, for me, I’ve had multiple people ask me about how to do things when they need reminders or help with assignments or issues that they run into at work, and in that situation, it is beneficial to know how to communicate solutions, suggestions and feedback in a way where everyone stands to gain.

From the blog CS@Worcester – V's CompSCi Blog by V and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.