| To me the terms are roughly interchangeable if taken in their general meaning, or at least easy to confuse with one another. But when I wrote this article, I hinged it off of specific definitions assigned to the terms in the Dreyfus Model, which although not exactly commonplace, is an established bit of literature (for example, Pragmatic Press uses Dreyfus Model to indicate expected skill level for readers of their books) So I stuck with their definitions and attempted to restate those definitions (informally) in the article. But I'd be fine with you calling these Thing 1 and Thing 2, as long as they mapped to the definitions provided. What the article refers to as competence (Thing 1) is something programmers generally recognize as valuable, because it is valuable! Essential, in fact. What the article refers to as proficiency (Thing 2) is something programmers probably also recognize as valuable, however... many do fall into the trap of thinking this: Thing 2 is what you get from being really good at Thing 1 in many areas. In truth, Thing 2 is what you get from being halfway decent at Thing 1 in many areas, and then with a view of the bigger picture, getting really good at specific aspects of Thing 1... in the context of your actual work, goals, etc. In other words, Thing 2 = Thing 1 X TheBiggerPicture. Now if I were to use my own way of thinking about this... I actually thing of Thing 1 (competence) as tactics, and Thing 2 (proficiency) as strategy. But I think that could end up leading to an even more confusingly overloaded set of terms. |