TITLE: If it matters enough to be careful, it matters enough to build a system.
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: November 28, 2018  1:56 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 In
<A HREF="https://seths.blog/2018/11/quality-and-effort/">
   Quality and Effort</A>,
 Seth Godin reminds us that being careful can take us only
 so far toward the quality we seek.  Humans make mistakes,
 so we need processes and systems in place to help us
 avoid them.  Near the end of the post, he writes:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 In school, we harangue kids to be more careful, and
 spend approximately zero time teaching them to build
 better systems instead.  We ignore checklists and
 processes because we've been taught that they're
 beneath us.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

 This paragraph isolates one of the great powers we can
 teach our students, but also a glaring weakness in how
 most of us actually teach.  I've been a professor for
 many years now, and before that I was a student for many
 years.  I've seen a lot of students succeed and a few
 not do as well as they or I had hoped.  Students who are
 methodical, patient, and disciplined in how they read,
 study, and program are much more likely to be in the
 successful group.

 Rules and discipline sometimes get a bad rap these days.
 Creativity and passion are our catchwords.  But dull,
 boring systems are often the keys that unlock the doors
 to getting things done and moving on to learn and do
 cooler things.

 Students occasionally ask me why I slavishly follow the
 processes I teach them, whether it's a system as big as
 test-first development and refactoring or a process as
 simple as the technique for creating NFAs and converting
 them to DFAs.  I tell them that I don't always trust
 myself but that I do trust the system: it almost always
 leads me to a working solution.  Sure, in this moment or
 that I might be fine going off script, but...  Good
 habits generate positive returns, while freewheeling it
 too often lets an error sneak in.  (When I go off script
 in class, they too often get to see just that!)

 We do our students a great favor when when we help them
 learn systems that work.  Following a
<A HREF="https://course.ccs.neu.edu/cs2500/design_recipe.html">
   design recipe</A>
 or something like it may be boring, but students who
 learn to follow it develop stronger programming skills,
 enjoy the success of getting projects done successfully,
 and graduate on to more interesting problems.  As the
 system becomes ingrained as habit, they usually begin to
 appreciate it as an enabler of their success.

 I agree with Godin: If it matters enough to be careful,
 then it matters enough to build (or learn) a system.
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