Beginner Level Material

 “We need more beginner-level material, more Basic-knowledge topics”

This was the cry from a conference routinier and organizer(m/f)

My replies to this remark are multiple:

1. Agree: I see many app/dev/ops/archs make basic (known-)mistakes.
2. Beginner-level topics are not sexy, the don't draw crowds.
3. Basic topics don't promote/sell products.
4. Beginners are not at conferences, they are on stack-overflow.
5. I first want to Talk to their managers and “architects”.

And of course, in Covid-19 days, there are hardly any conferences anymore, just web-video-youtube-streaming-meetings. The remark comes from meeting ppl at POUG and from a weekly zoom call with some friends.

I will say that whatever goes wrong in IT (and a lot goes sub-optimal or plain wrong), it is not the fault of the "beginner" or even of the Dev.

The "root cause" of most wrongs is with the lead, the architect of said "Dev". 

Mistakes I seem to see are (in +/- random order)

 - No basic Design.

 - Chasing interesting technology, rather than building a useful system.

 - No database-design: you don't know what your data looks like!! 

 - Use of object-store (hierarchical datamodel) rather than a well-designed (table/relational) model.

 - No (data-)life-cycle, and unlimited growth.

 - Inefficient data-access (e.g. no indexes, or very poor datamodel)

 - Use of technology (RDBMS or any other) without much experience or knowledge.

 - No testing, no “verification” (despite good intention of automated "pipeline")

So, in all my "Senior Arrogance" I stated that, rather than "more beginner level material", we need some sort of "curriculum for IT-professionals". 

Currently I'm thinking of “how can I help on this ?” 

Expect a few blog-posts on t his topic soon. Probably starting with pointers to the likes of HeliH, ToonK, JeffS, TimH etc.. 

And we know: You can lead a horse to water, but it still needs to drink...

Suggestions welcome (in comments or on twitter…)

note: I find it better to put extensive ramblings on a blogpost rather than to string a set of tweets together. But reactions on Twitter tend to start better and more accessible discussions.