Flipping the Switch 

If I ever said to anyone that teaching was easy, or that anyone could do it, then I apologize now. I don't think I have ever actually said that... I know too many teachers to have ever been so foolish, but I thought I'd say that just to be sure. My aunt teaches 2nd grade in a smallish school district about 45 minutes from where I live and I hear some pretty funny, and also sad, stories from her. Another of my best friends is a high school teacher, and until this year taught in some of the worst high schools in the Milwaukee Public School system. So in comparison with those two incredible people, my little rant here should seem minor. I'll share it anyway.

When I originally started at my current client, I was under the impression that I would be helping to design a new application for them. That turned out to be less than true. I ended up doing maintenance on an ugly existing project, poorly designed, filled with spaghetti code, which I could not alter the design for (due to severe time constraints). Then the opportunity came for me to actually work on a new project, and help create the design behind it. When that opportunity came up, I used my whit and charm, and sneaky negotiating skills to get myself off the old project and onto this new one. So far it's turned out to be pretty cool. One of my responsibilities on this new project is to "mentor" some of the other programmers on the project. And by mentor, I mean teach them how to program. Don't get me wrong, they're smart people... but they're ex-mainframe folks who are now learning .NET. Believe me when I tell you that they are worlds apart.

One of the issues that I've run into, is that we have very little common ground. It's like trying to teach English to a native Mexican, when you don't know a lick of Spanish. At first I sluffed it off as no big deal. After all, writing code is still writing code. No matter if you're talking COBOL or Visual Basic .NET, mainframe systems or PC's... the basics are still there. You still have variables and types and memory and all those good things. Let it never be said that I can't admit to my mistakes.

I've learned two important things over the last couple of weeks. First off is that moving from procedural programming to object oriented programming is harder for people than I thought. Having grown up as an object oriented programmer myself, I think of it as second nature. But now as I work with these procedural programmers, I can see a fog in their eyes. They sort of get it, but they don't think in terms of objects, and methods on those objects. It reminds me of talking to a friend of mine from Russia. He said that for the longest time he was always speaking Russian in his head, and then translated to English when he spoke. Then one day he realized that he started speaking English in his head, and stopped translating. It was like flipping a light switch. I think going from procedural to object oriented programming is a lot like that.

The other big thing that I've learned is actually about myself. I always thought I was good at teaching because I could explain technical things to a non-technical person really well. I realized recently that the reason I was so successful was due to my own expectations of people. I didn't expect them to understand the nitty gritty, and didn't even bother explaining it to them. I explained to them the things I expected them to understand in terms that they would understand. My biggest problem now is that because they are programmers, and technical people, I expect a lot more of them. So it becomes more frustrating for me when they don't meet those expectations as I teach the nitty gritty that they need to know. It is difficult because I can't seem to flip that light switch for them... I have to let them flip it themselves.

I will say it has been nice as I've seen them get things over time. But then, like today, they ask questions and we go over things that we've talked about before. Don't you remember? We went over that on Thursday. I guess I remember now... I just forgot over the weekend. It's like high school algebra all over again. Damn the long weekends!