A Cautionary Tale of Learning to Code
A Cautionary Tale of Learning to Fix Teeth. My own.How a reasonably balanced individual nearly went insaneI was just a guy in a suit in an office with a vague healthcare idea. Then I decided to learn to fix teeth.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.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.Most dentistry books start off nice and easy before making big assumptions about your prior knowledge.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.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.Most arguments about restoration techniques are what dentists call "religious wars" - rooted more in historical differences than practical merit.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.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.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.After 7 months of grueling self-study and going to dental events, I landed my first Dental HMO job...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?[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: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2882620]