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It's Packers vs Mappers Again
In reading this, I was reminded of something from The Programmers Stone about how the world can be divided into two groups: packers and mappers. (The usual caveats about generalisations apply!) The terms mapping and packing are introduced in Thinking about Thinking. Packers are those users you mention who "learn how to use a computer through rote memorization of basic tasks, not through an actual understanding of the processes involved." Typically packers become lost when they don't have a "script" for the current situation. Mappers are the people who "can adapt to minor and even major changes", by maintaining a mental map of how things work, referring to it as necessary, and happily discarding and rebuilding chunks of the map which no longer reflect reality. As I say, it's a generalisation, but it makes a useful lens nevertheless. Whether mappers are better or smarter than packers is an open question, but I suspect that packers make better accountants than programmers, and vice versa. Different horses for different courses? There are responses to this message:
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