You have developed a deep understanding of your first language and are walking comfortably on a plateau of competence. Your colleagues recognize your abilities and call on you to help them solve problems in your area of expertise. You have pride in your skills.

You are struggling to learn new things and it seems somehow harder than it was before to acquire new skills. The pace of your self-education seems to be slowing down despite your best efforts. You fear that your personal development may have stalled.

While retaining the confidence you have gained through your learning, set your previous knowledge aside as you approach new situations. As Yoda so wisely says in The Empire Strikes Back, “You must unlearn what you have learned.”

Wearing the white belt is based on the realization that while the black belt knows the way, the white belt has no choice but to learn the way.

Part of the approach Dave took as a family therapist included maintaining a not knowing stance. Families in difficult circumstances were experiencing a unique reality that, despite his training, Dave knew he could not fully appreciate. While he acknowledged his skills at facilitating constructive questions and conversations, Dave was taught to refrain from believing that he had any expert knowledge into the realities that these families experienced. While this may seem counterintuitive, in reality it fosters an attitude of respect and curiosity that opens up unforeseen possibilities and solutions. Rather than pushing solutions down on the family, Dave’s not knowing stance helped him to collaborate with the family to find solutions as a team.

Taking this approach to learning new technologies accelerates the learning process tremendously. Training yourself to suspend the use of your customary programming idioms allows you to discover new possibilities. However, as a programmer finally feeling proud of achieving a significant level of expertise, taking a step toward ignorance and allowing yourself to look foolish can be painful. But consider the words of George Leonard from the final pages of Mastery:

Or take the following example of a 10-year industry veteran keeping an open mind and learning something new:

As Steve learned, we have to be able to put aside our past experiences and preconceptions to allow new knowledge in. This is especially difficult when trying to learn your second programming language, because it is likely the first time that you have to sacrifice productivity in order to improve your skills. Previously you would have approached problems as empty cups, with few preconceptions about “the correct way” to solve them. Now you must try to avoid synthesizing new and old knowledge until the new knowledge has had time to sink in, and approach this new knowledge with the mind of a beginner. This may mean losing some productivity in the short term in order take a leap forward once you master the new approach.

One of the benefits of adopting this mindset when learning a new language, tool, or business domain is that you are open to learning how to express yourself idiomatically, thus smoothing your communication with the existing community. By avoiding the old problem of “writing Fortran in any language” you gain a far deeper understanding of the new knowledge. Thus, when you eventually reconcile new and old knowledge you are better placed to develop productive insights from both fields.

Take the following Java code as an example. It generates random numbers for the United Kingdom’s National Lottery by printing a set of six distinct numbers from 1 to 49 inclusive:

public class Lottery {
    private static final int NUMBER_OF_RANDOM_NUMBERS = 6;
    private static final int MAX_RANDOM_NUMBER = 49;

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SortedSet randomNumbers = new TreeSet();
        Random random = new Random();
        while (randomNumbers.size() < NUMBER_OF_RANDOM_NUMBERS) {
            Integer randomNumber = new Integer(random.nextInt(MAX_RANDOM_NUMBER) + 1);
            randomNumbers.add(randomNumber);
        }
        System.out.println(randomNumbers);
    }
}

If you were asked to reimplement this in a slightly different language like Io (which is designed to have a very minimal syntax while still being approachable to mainstream programmers), you could reuse a lot of your Java knowledge and write it like this:

list := List clone

while (list size < 6,
    n := Random value(1 50) floor
    list appendIfAbsent( n )
)

list sort print

But if you were asked to implement it in a radically different language like J, you would find this approach doesn’t work. Only by “wearing the white belt”—accepting that in a language that doesn’t have loops there must be a radically different but nonetheless valid way of solving problems—can you make progress. So in idiomatic J, the answer is:

sort 1 + (6 ? 49)

Later on we will show you patterns to help you practice, devise toy programs, and consciously reflect on the work you’re doing. These patterns will allow you to appreciate the deeper commonalities between the different sets of knowledge that you possess, and create situations where you can hone your skills without the pressure to maintain your normal levels of productivity.

Find an opportunity to unlearn something. Ideally, this would be something that forces you to put aside your previous experience.

For instance, take a program you have written in one programming paradigm (e.g., imperative, object-oriented, functional, array/vector-oriented, etc.) and implement it in a language that uses a different paradigm. Make sure your new implementation follows the idioms of the new language. If all the languages you know use the same paradigm (e.g., object orientation), then this is also an opportunity to learn a new paradigm.

This pattern goes beyond programming languages, but that happens to be one area where misconceptions can easily arise. So find someone who uses a programming language or a set of technologies that are unfamiliar to you. Ask that person to explain some of the misconceptions that people from your particular background usually have about their community.

Breakable Toys, Practice, Practice, Practice, and Reflect As You Work.