Being Professional

Well over 10 years ago I learned of the so called Four stages of competence.

In short, these four stages identify the progression of skill adoption:
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Someone with Unconscious Incompetence doesn't even know that they don't know.

Someone who is Consciously Incompetent has some idea of what he doesn't know.

Someone who is Consciously Competent can get the job done, but has to work at it.

Shorter than some, longer than many, my 1 hour commute to and from work each day used to be down time. Over the last three or four years, I’ve found that podcasts are a good way to fill the time.

Scott Hanselman has just posted Hanselman's Super Karate Death Car List of .NET and Software Podcasts and suggested that others do the same … here’s what occupies my commute.

Leon Bambrick has an interesting post 8 ways to be a better programmer in 6 minutes. Even if you don’t agree with Leon’s tips, they’re interesting, and thought provoking.

In the same spirit, here’s some more tips for you … though some of these might take more than 6 minutes to do.

Learn the Keys

I’m finding that attitude and intent make an important contribution to the code I write.

For example, though I currently use NUnit as my testing framework, and Rhino.Mocks for mocking, I’m not always using these to write tests or mocks.

Confused? Let me explain.

Jay Fields has a recent post “The Cost of Net Negative Producing Programmers”, in which he laments the high impact of NNPPs and the lack of any industry structure that encourages them to leave the field.

I find it reasonably depressing to find that, in many ways, I agree with his argument.

Worse, I’d go so far as to suggest that a similar problem exists in other parts of the ICT industry.

Some examples from my own experience …