[artmageddon]

I can't read the article(blocked at work here), so at face value I agree with you. But then the question is, how do you go about measuring the latter?

[codingdave]

I'd ask a different question, of why do you need to measure it in the first place? I learn more about our codebase, my productivity goes up -- I deliver more updates, with less bugs, faster as I learn. Do I need to measure the details of how much I learned? Or is it sufficient to just know that I'm grokking more each day, and that is reflected in my work?

Isn't that the mantra of BI? Be careful what you measure, because that is what you will improve.

[TeMPOraL]

> Isn't that the mantra of BI? Be careful what you measure, because that is what you will improve.

The corollary is that you don't improve what you don't measure.

> Or is it sufficient to just know that I'm grokking more each day, and that is reflected in my work?

OP's point is, I believe, that you don't know that you're really grokking much of anything and how much it's actually reflected in your work, because you're not measuring it. This can work if you have good feedback mechanism at work, though.

[cortesoft]

> The corollary is that you don't improve what you don't measure.

I mean, this is a nice saying, but it is pretty clearly not true. Lots of things that aren't measured are improved; we have not measured my two year olds vocabulary at all, but it is certainly improving.

[swsieber]

Indeed. The correct corralary is "Things that don't improve aren't being measured"

E.g. negating A => B yields !B => !A

[jayliew]

So measuring learning is a good thing, because it means you will likely be more deliberate in actually getting better at it, as opposed to just leaving it up to chance