Is a practical understanding enough? Are fundamental “first principles” necessary?
My company has a lot of processing jobs. People know how the systems work and how to get their jobs done – practical knowledge.
But they lack “bottom-up” “first principles”-type understanding. They don’t know all the features of the software, they just know the buttons that get their specific job done. They don’t know how people tick, they just know which buttons to push with their manager to get what they want.
If you give them a new computer system, or a new manager, or a new process… or change any part of their job… they will be lost and require weeks of re-training.
What does this analogy show us?
They can’t readily apply what they know to related tasks, because they only know very specific things, not general principles.
Bottom-up acquisition gives people fundamental understanding, so that they can work effectively in a broad range of tasks.
Let’s apply this to computer programming, since that’s relevant and familiar.
Suppose you learn to write BASIC. You only learn BASIC. You read a stack of books on BASIC. You’re an expert BASIC programmer, in a company which sells software written in BASIC. Are you any good to any other company as a “programmer”? No, you’re just a BASIC hacker with a narrow skill set.
That’s the problem with top-down learning.
References:
Never Read Passively: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Acqusition of Principles
