The importance of stupidity in scientific research.

Martin A. Schwartz:

“… it hit me. Science makes me feel stupid too. It’s just that I’ve gotten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid. I wouldn’t know what to do without that feeling. I even think it’s supposed to be this way. “ 

I read this today and realized that this is the exact same conclusion that I’ve reached over the last couple years.

Unknowns are good, and we ought to pursue them harder than we currently do — especially in the sciences.  Yes, it’s a little bewildering to be set in the midst of so much that could go wrong, but even if you uncover one grain of truth, that’s something that perhaps no-one has even seen before.

GWT is a great technology. It was hailed as full-stack one-language SDK with a lot of promise. However, be that as it may, I still can’t use it. Coming from the perspective of a web developer and having to give up access to HTML, Javascript, DOM, and CSS is difficult. I spent the time to learn how Javascript works and the intricacies of CSS. And even supposing there is a benefit to GWT’s compiled Javascript, I would need to learn a ton to make use of it. (I’ll bypass the fact that a developer can’t be ignorant of what’s happening [...]

Most people suck at communicating—and I’m one of them. I get passionate about this issue because, really, it’s such an simple thing to change. Reordering a few words, pulling a few out, and generally saying less can have a profound impact—but then, why is it so hard? Because it’s hard to be honest, and it’s hard to hear honesty. I’m a perfect example of this. I make elaborate fabrications to sound well-informed when, really, I don’t have a clue what’s going on. It would be better to admit I’m clueless and move on. But, I could lose my contract, or [...]

I’ve been thinking about practice lately—and about growth. Here are some thoughts: Programming is a complicated job. Many people see it as a craft, and as craftsmen, programmers must spend countless hours honing their skills and improving their expertise to reach a level to compete at the level they desire to be at. For example: If I want to build web pages at an amateur level, I simply need to know HTML, some CSS, and maybe some jQuery. For every question that might come up, there is usually a hundred answers on Google. If I want to do the same thing [...]

The WordPress community bugs me sometimes. I don’t really have anything bad to say about the community personally. Just the side-effects of the community, which I can sum up in one word. NOISE. There are tens-of-thousands of people posting blog posts about the same exact thing. For example, recently I needed to write a plugin that would display the results of a search on a page in the content area. I looked it up on google and found thousands of articles on “How to write a wordpress plugin”. Each one describing in nearly the EXACT same words how to accomplish [...]

Really interesting video. It gives some great statistics about the world we’re living in. See also: http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/

I used to hate the idea of Twitter and I was utterly opposed to becoming part of it. The idea of random people watching what I was doing seemed weird and useless. I don’t love being in the spotlight, I’m even a bit of a recluse at times. So it seemed exceptionally out of character to want to have people follow my random thoughts… That is, until I realized what I was missing out on. I want to grow a community. I want to contribute. I have something to bring to the table and I’m not going to wait for [...]

LabEleven (the company I work for) has just re-launched their website. It has taken many prior forms, but this one finally approaches the level of quality we seek with our own clients. http://www.lab11.com Check it out!

recently tried to revamp my personal habits of website testing. I’ve heard great things about Selenium and how it is really easy to get started via the Selenium IDE.

But the easy-to-use experience ends before it really begins…