I’m not sure this is really a bias. Maybe it’s just that the cost of acquiring propositional knowledge has decreased more relative to the cost of acquiring procedural knowledge, in which case it’s quite rational to accumulate more propositional knowledge. Emile made a similar point.
Also, I have an anecdotal example of propositional knowledge clearly beating procedural knowledge. I used to have shoulder pain from using computers too much. I visited a doctor and a physical therapist, and neither of them were able to help me. I ended up solving the problem myself after reading books about anatomy and physiology, and then doing Internet searches, which found a crucial piece of propositional knowledge that the doctor and therapist apparently weren’t aware of.
About your digression, personally I’ve found that most of the propositional knowledge I’ve learned for fun has ended up being useful. Maybe that’s just a coincidence, but there are also things I think would be useful for me to learn that aren’t fun for me, so I think it’s probably just that the value of propositional knowledge is pretty high in general.
BTW, if you have a lot more knowledge about programming than you need for your current work, why not look for a more challenging job or project?
Ok, that makes sense. Also, one problem with knowing a lot about programming is that you can easily write code that nobody else can understand or maintain.
What kind of projects are you working on? Do you have a personal homepage that you can share? (And why doesn’t this blog let users put their homepage links on their user pages?)
I’m not sure this is really a bias. Maybe it’s just that the cost of acquiring propositional knowledge has decreased more relative to the cost of acquiring procedural knowledge, in which case it’s quite rational to accumulate more propositional knowledge. Emile made a similar point.
Also, I have an anecdotal example of propositional knowledge clearly beating procedural knowledge. I used to have shoulder pain from using computers too much. I visited a doctor and a physical therapist, and neither of them were able to help me. I ended up solving the problem myself after reading books about anatomy and physiology, and then doing Internet searches, which found a crucial piece of propositional knowledge that the doctor and therapist apparently weren’t aware of.
About your digression, personally I’ve found that most of the propositional knowledge I’ve learned for fun has ended up being useful. Maybe that’s just a coincidence, but there are also things I think would be useful for me to learn that aren’t fun for me, so I think it’s probably just that the value of propositional knowledge is pretty high in general.
BTW, if you have a lot more knowledge about programming than you need for your current work, why not look for a more challenging job or project?
My projects are challenging in other ways, programming just isn’t the limiting factor any more.
Ok, that makes sense. Also, one problem with knowing a lot about programming is that you can easily write code that nobody else can understand or maintain.
What kind of projects are you working on? Do you have a personal homepage that you can share? (And why doesn’t this blog let users put their homepage links on their user pages?)
I’m the sole frontend developer for http://kosmosnimki.ru and http://openphotovr.org , as well as other stuff that isn’t so well-known.
Tangent: you should see about optimizing http://kosmosnimki.ru for loading speed some more. I assume you’re familiar with Yslow for firebug?
Yes, I am. Maybe we should do that. But we aren’t global, and it’s fast enough for Russia :-)
ETA: does OpenPhotoVR load fast enough for you? I.e., is it a Russia problem or a hosting problem?
OpenPhotoVR doesn’t seem as resource-intensive, though I haven’t played with it much. In general, I haven’t noticed any Russia problems.
Thanks! Will investigate with the hosting provider tomorrow.