A Cautionary Tale of Learning to Code
A Cautionary Tale of Learning to Fix Teeth. My own.<p>How a reasonably balanced individual nearly went insane<p>I was just a guy in a suit in an office with a vague healthcare idea. Then I decided to learn to fix teeth.<p>I overheard some guy at a happy hour bragging about how easily he was able to automate his overbite by using a technique called "4 Handed Dentristry". I thought, "huh, 4 Handed Dentistry." I went home, googled it, and within 15 seconds, I was working through a random 4 Handed Dentistry tutorial.<p>A week later, I went to my first dentalspace meeting. Everyone was talking about techniques like orthodontics, endodontics, and maxillofacial surgery. There was so much to learn. I borrowed three O'reilly books and got about 50 pages into each of them.<p>Most dentistry books start off nice and easy before making big assumptions about your prior knowledge.<p>A friend told me I should get good at drilling, and gave me his drill bits. I spent a few hours learning basic foot controls so I could further configure it.<p>Then some guy walked by and saw me drilling. "Why are you drilling?" he asked me. "Don't you know lasers are better?" "Hm. Lasers." So I started memorizing dozens of laser shortcuts.<p>Most arguments about restoration techniques are what dentists call "religious wars" - rooted more in historical differences than practical merit.<p>At the time, it seemed reasonable to think that the faster I could drill, the faster I could fix teeth. I switched to a hydraulic drillset because, hey, it was objectively the most efficient method a dentist could use.<p>Can you count how many letters, numbers and teeth are in their original oral positions? I'll give you a hint - it's in the low single digits.<p>On the days I could actually get my netbook to successfully boot DentalCAD - and that I was able to drill more than 10 teeth per minute - I studied oral surgery by working through books and Udacity courses.<p>After 7 months of grueling self-study and going to dental events, I landed my first Dental HMO job...<p>You kinda get the idea by now? I dunno, I think what we do is every bit as professional as dentistry. So why don't posts like OP's seem as absurd as mine?<p>[UPDATE: For those of you who have suggested that programmers don't have others' well-being in their hands, actually quite a few of us have, just not as directly as dentists. We are a profession and we do do important work. A few examples in an old post: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2882620" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2882620</a>]