Stand Up For Your Rights, But Sit Down And Listen, Too!

Posted by Robert on the 20th of October, 2006 at 3:23 PM GMT0. Permalink.
Tags: Geek, Web Design, Web Standards

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When I posted this, I was listening to: Third Eye Blind - Farther

Eric Meyer wrote a piece on Vitamin called Stand Up For Your Rights!. I totally misread it the first time, but it gave me a few ideas. I have mentored a few people in web design. Meyer's article made me think a bit harder about how I usually mentor people, and made me realize one good idea for mentoring.

I guess I should note first that the original article I wrote assumed that Meyer's article wasn't tongue-in-cheek and that Meyer was actually lambasting professionals that demand people understand the history, best practices, rules, et cetera of the trade they are interested in. I blame it on the intro to the article. I later realized (you can see the comments on the Vitamin page) that Meyer was actually making the point that, if one doesn't know everything one needs to know about a trade, he can't do the trade worth a damn and comes off looking foolish. My original point still stands: give newbies room to breath until they are ready to go to the next level.

I got into web design when I was 16 or 17 at the suggestion of J Logan. This was back when someone could fade a page in with multiple body tags. Needless to say, web standards, DOM scripting, separation of content and design, and all the other buzz words I know, love, and advocate weren't really around (at least not how they are today). All of our HTML sucked (but it was well formatted if you viewed the source). It was a long time before these concepts came about. When they did, I latched onto them because I wanted to take my design to the next level. I'm not sure how I would have felt if the stringent standards I hold for myself now were preached to me then. I may have pushed on because I loved it so much, but I can't expect everyone to.

When I started playing with Philosophy, I didn't read any Philosophy books. I was a logical person, but I had never taken Logic. In fact, I didn't take Logic until my final year of college. After taking the class, I really wished I had taken it early on like I was supposed to. My point is, I wanted to have the raw, dive-in-head-first experience and forcing too much structure in the beginning would have probably bored me. In the end, however, learning the basic rules and concepts was essential to my understanding of Philosophy as a whole.

When most people try something new, they aren't trying to be professionals. They are trying to see if they enjoy the experience. They don't need to know all the rules, best practices, and standards just to play around and have fun. However, when the person gets to the point of wanting to walk the road to becoming a professional, it is essential that they learn the important concepts of the trade.

So, mentors, give your proteges room to make mistakes and learn from them. Give them room to be sloppy and have fun. Sure, they'll produce garbage for awhile. Reward them for even trying. But when the time comes, school them in the essential concepts.

Or, for the newbies, stand up for your rights, but sit down and listen, too.

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