Re: Java 7 features
- From: blmblm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blmblm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 11 Sep 2007 13:26:15 GMT
In article <5knhpvF4d96cU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
blmblm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blmblm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <1189481208.078505.262230@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
<nebulous99@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 10, 5:56 am, blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[ snip ]
Could be. I guess I could try harder to not make mistakes in
the first place, but once a mistake is made, it seems to me
that the sensible thing to do is to acknowledge it and move on.
There's also the matter of explaining why it could not have been
avoided, though, isn't there? To avoid being blamed for its
consequences. Obviously it wouldn't happen unless it was unavoidable
for some reason, or you would have avoided it. Maybe it was a
statistically inevitable result of insufficient information, or
something. But if you just meekly acknowledge it without explaining
why you were unable to avoid it you may develop a reputation for
incompetence and lazy workmanship, or whatever.
Could be. Maybe this would be a good point at which to comment
that a lot of my thinking about reputation in the workplace was
formed in situations in which people generally pretty much knew
who was competent and who wasn't, based on direct knowledge of
their work, and their opinions weren't much swayed by admissions of
mistakes or self-deprecating humor. The head technical person at
a previous job used to comment, on finding a bug in his own code,
"who wrote this code?!", with a clear implication that he was the
culprit. No one thought worse of him for it; we all knew he was
a lot more than competent. To me this is how things should be.
Sometimes it's not possible -- in my current workplace, people's
work is different enough that sometimes all we have to go on
is what each person says about his/her work. But in technical
newsgroups, it seems to me that one can form opinions based on
people's work rather than on what they or others say about it.
I realize that you may very well conclude from the paragraph
above that you're right and I'm wrong, and I'm admitting it, and
so you win. Go ahead. I'd still rather be known as someone who
admits to mistakes when she makes them than as someone who wlll
never, ever admit to being wrong.
Why does it happen so often that I think of a few more points
I maybe should have made, *after* dispatching a post into the
ether .... Well.
Sure, I'm often tempted to respond to criticism with "if I made
a mistake, it wasn't my fault!" Sometimes that's even valid
and necessary. Often, though, it strikes me as an unattractive
unwillingness to admit to error, an introducing of ego into a
discussion that should be about something technical.
As for whether X's reputation is based more on facts or on what
X and others say about him/her -- I guess I believe that the
latter is imperfect at best, wrong-headed at worst, most often
engaged in by those who aren't competent to evaluate the facts,
and therefore not something I want to pander to. Maybe that's
unrealistic. <shrug>
--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.
.
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