As I touched upon in the previous essay, teach rules as if they were unbreakable laws of nature. It provides a structured starting point for a novice. To mature to an expert level, the training wheels need to erode at some point. Once the foundation has settled, the progressing student can start deviating from the rules. Nix the training wheels, knee pads, and bike helmet.

The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition preaches this.^[12] The Dreyfus model is, put simply, a model of how students learn. It was proposed in 1980 by a couple of PhD brothers (Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus) in their research at UC Berkeley.^[13]

When we begin to master a subject like programming, we stop analyzing the rules to guide our work. That stuff just comes naturally. We start to think more abstractly. We envision multiple paths to achieve the same functional goal. There is no more recipe; there’s just intuition. When our student starts finding that same intuition, we know we’ve done a good job. Encourage that type of autonomous thought.

How do you do that? After a while, you’ll begin to see your student ask fewer and fewer technical questions in favor of strategy questions. That’s the first sign they’ve mastered the “hows and whats” and are now looking for “why.” When they start asking why, it usually means they think there’s a better approach. What you’ve taught them is limiting their quickly forming natural intuition.

Keep encouraging that thought process. Don’t suppress it with an iron fist. Get them to offer an alternative and go through the pros and cons. When there’s a clear advantage to one approach, take the student all the way through the less optimal scenario so they see what pitfalls may lie ahead.

Down the road, the alternatives they give you will get even more compelling. At a certain point, you might even have them choose the path for themselves. There might even be a day when the student you’ve taught is now teaching you. That’s not a sign you’re losing a step; it’s a sign you’ve really learned how to teach.

In this chapter, we looked at teaching from within: guiding our programming apprentices down the path of understanding what’s in our heads.

But teaching our clients our ways has just as much merit too. In the next chapter, we’ll talk about how teaching can foster a healthier relationship with the people handing you the paycheck.