[FRIAM] /Topic Latent in: Latent Topics was: enough sleep?

[Steven A Smith]

Marcus -
> Among engineers, especially young ones, one way the ego-centric individual presents herself is via Not Invented Here (NIH).  She simply cannot imagine studying and using another work.    The tribe permits it so long as the tribe can be impermeable to criticism and that they can get her to associate the work with the group.   It doesn't matter if it is grossly wasteful of time or money.   Also NIH superficially makes the engineer appear more instrumental because she is solving a simpler problem than if she rationalized the state-of-the-art before beginning her venture.

I've done my time mentoring aspiring engineers.   For the longest time,
I found a certain "reverse psychology" to work well.  Instead of
assigning them to (find and) learn and use a
package/library/circuit/mechanism and have them resist and subvert that
assignment (like conjuring their own point-solution to a subset of the
real problem), I found that if I assigned them the problem of conjuring
their own algorithm and (re)implementing it, they would go bashing
around trying to find a shortcut (e.g. someone else having already
studied the problem well and found optimal solutions).

Even for myself, I've found that if a library/package/tool seems
intractable, if I go off and try to hamfist the same thing without the
leverage I come to appreciate more of the nuances of the problem as well
as being humbled into a new kind of patience by trying to solve it "the
hard way".

- Steve