Knowledge in the process

Sometimes more knowledge resides in the process of making something than in the result. We need to be careful: looking only at the result can cause us to miss this knowledge.

Examples

• Peter Norvig’s notebooks: Jupyter notebooks that show the thought process. They offer a glimpse of how a master thinks and the order in which he tackles a problem.
  • xkcd 1313: regex golf
  • xkcd 1313: Regex Golf (Part 2: Infinite Problems)
  • github.com/norvig/pytudes
• Pair programming: Pair programming lets people teach and learn small habits that are hard to pick up from books. A great deal of tacit knowledge is difficult to learn from a book.
• Kent Beck’s Test-driven development: by example: A vivid account of the test-driven development process, as though you were watching over his shoulder. The best way to learn TDD is to pair with someone who already does it well, and this book captures that feeling as closely as possible.

See also

• Values in the process