TITLE: Another Take on Embracing Failure
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: February 11, 2009  4:42 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
A student reader sent me a message to say that he
didn't click with my talk of
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2009-02.html#e2009-02-09T16_31_38.htm">
   'embracing' failure</A>.
He prefers to think in terms of <EM>pushing through</EM>
failure to reach success.  So I found it interesting
when I ran across a
<A HREF="http://vocamus.net/dave/?p=299">
   blog entry</A>
with a similar them (via
<A HREF="http://pyre.third-bit.com/blog/archives/2006.html">
   The Third Bit</A>)
on the same day:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
I'm writing this in order to talk about failure and
coping....  I've got the failure down.  So what about
coping?  ... failure is really information.  You don't
fail and therefore become a failure.  You fail and in
so doing you learn and gain more understanding.

<P> ...  I've come to understand that if I'm not making
mistakes it means I'm not trying hard enough, and I'm
not pushing myself far enough.  </P>
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

In this article, David Humphrey recounts the details
of a vexing experience trying to fix a bug.  Humphrey
uses the bug -- unresolved by the end of the article
-- to explain how he feels about failing repeatedly.
He isn't broken; he is empowered by the information
he has captured.  Whether we call that embracing
failure, both the inevitability of failing and the
knowledge we gain by failing, or coping, or gathering
information, it seems to be an important trait of
people who enjoy computing.

If you'd like to read more on Humphrey's ideas after
he fixed his bug, check out his
<A HREF="http://vocamus.net/dave/?p=311">
   follow-up article</A>.
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