On Friday 24 June 2005 10:50, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

On Friday 24 Jun 2005 10:22 am, sherlock@vsnl.com wrote:

...

And 3~5 yrs it does take to learn - in or outside a formal institution. The difference is that inside you will view the world thru the prof's blinkers - and most of those are very colored. IMO learning outside is far better, inspite of the hurdles and occassional hot reception to (ahem) dumb questions.

the point i am making is the concept of 'the best learn by themselves' which is simply not true. Self help, as i have already mentioned, is a crucial component of learning - but only one component.

Tiger woods is the best golfer in the world - but has a coach, so for Anand. Maria Sharopova's father flew to florida with $700 in his pocket - why didnt he stick in siberia and encourage his daughter to learn by herself? Sania Mizra's biggest weakness is fitness and is running from pillar to post trying to find a fitness coach - surely she could learn to keep fit on her own by reading books, watching TV and googling? In fact the only guys who subscribe to this self-taught crap is the indian hockey federation

• and they are wallowing in deep kaka.

You are mixing unrelated learning processes. Sports is a mix of several discliplines - kineselogy, physiology, psychology, material sciences etc. which you could ofcourse aquire by googling. But you cannot implement it on yourself cause it involves observing yourself while traning. Besides doubling the time to train this requires experience to discern cause and effect - not very observable outside a very well equipped lab. Hence you require a mentor - coach - not formal education although that helps. ( Self glorification - trained in the distant past in swimming and water polo for 8 yrs and continue to practice karate under Shihan Pervez B. Mistry from 77 to 83 and 2000 till date). And the hockey team needs to get rid of pompous IHF officials more than anything else.

formal training imparts certain fundamental skills and discipline which can only be appreciated by ppl unfortunate enough not to have the benefits of the same. It also, to a great extent, prevents one from reinventing the wheel - i just spent 20 hours on debugging an app due to an error so simple that it has never been mentioned in any HOWTO or tutorial as it was considered too elementary to be worth mention.

Believe me that happens with everyone :--( That is why you need peer review and debuggers and ofcourse access to the source.

There is only one area where self taught is best - where you are breaking new ground and venturing where no man has been before. And this does not apply to the instant case.

And that happens to be the case with computing and programming.

rgds jtd