[em-bee]

The struggle with being self-taught is that you don’t know what you don’t know.

yes, but he knew. i mean he should have known that he used stuff without knowing why.

i am mostly self taught too, and i agree with your statement, but i don't see an excuse for using stuff and not trying to understand why. i mean sure, when i follow a tutorial , at first i'll copy things i don't understand, but do that a few times, understanding should eventually come. that's how i learned how OO programming works. i followed the motions for a while, and one morning i woke up and it clicked. if you keep using something without understanding it, then it is time to ask questions. what is this thing that i keep using? how does it actually work, and what are other ways to solve the same problem?

things that i don't know are things that i never came across. i just recently had an interview that asked me questions where i honestly had to respond: i never touched this issue in my programming career so i can't give you an answer, just my best guess. but i never had a situation where i kept using something without eventually understanding why.

[CobrastanJorji]

> he should have known that he used stuff without knowing why.

We all use stuff without knowing why. Many of the folks on here are deeply curious people who love learning about the world around them, especially for the tools we use in our daily careers and hobbies, but even then there's a huge number of things in our lives that we just do because it's what we do and it works. If you went to a "being a person" interview, and they asked you why you used a bow knot to tie your shoes and what the pros and cons of it were versus other knots, would you really have an answer?

[em-bee]

would you really have an answer?

actually, yes i would.

ok, to be fair, i have been sailing, so i learned a thing or two about knots, but i am also the inquisitive type that questions why things are the way they are. (your typical HN reader, as you say, i suppose). furthermore i have been moving around in the world a lot, which has naturally challenged many preconceived ideas.

i guess maybe my point is that being inquisitive is a natural part of learning and we should all be inquisitive when learning something.

i am unable to come up with an example of doing something without thinking about it, but i guess that is another case of not knowing what i don't know, or rather i can't think about it because i am not thinking about it.