It certainly matters more in medicine, where you have very serious risk of causing people pain, but as I've gotten a bit older I've become a lot more sympathetic to people having trouble keeping up with the world sometimes.
Like, it's not a good excuse, don't get me wrong, but as much as I try, I simply cannot keep up with the entire state of the art of computer science. I wish I could, and a younger me without a family and responsibilities actually would mostly keep up with everything, but now it just feels like there's never quite enough time to learn everything I really should.
I do try and keep up, I have a million textbooks and the like, and I try and at least go through the example problems for them, but it's pretty easy to fall behind in that stuff.
While a GP should keep up to date with ulcer research, and "I'm busy!" isn't a great excuse when serious pain and/or lives are on the line, but it's something I at least understand better now.
> Like, it's not a good excuse, don't get me wrong, but as much as I try, I simply cannot keep up with the entire state of the art of computer science. I wish I could, and a younger me without a family and responsibilities actually would mostly keep up with everything, but now it just feels like there's never quite enough time to learn everything I really should.
This is the part of this conversation that I don't get. Yes, it is impossible for one person to contain the entire body of knowledge, which means you're not going to know some of the time, and that might be embarrassing or otherwise troublesome.
However... it should be rare that you operate in complete isolation. You should be regularly interacting with other practitioners, including people whose entry into the field is newer, and therefore should be aware of the current state of the art. There should be interactions where that information is shared, both allowing projects you work on to take advantage of advances in the state of the art even if you don't know about it, and for you to become aware of advances in the state of the art.
Oh, I absolutely do not use this to demean people that are wrong. The point is that well established and largely effective knowledge on how things work can be completely changed with most of us not realizing it. All the more reason not to get upset with someone for not being aware of some advances. This should include self.
Like, it's not a good excuse, don't get me wrong, but as much as I try, I simply cannot keep up with the entire state of the art of computer science. I wish I could, and a younger me without a family and responsibilities actually would mostly keep up with everything, but now it just feels like there's never quite enough time to learn everything I really should.
I do try and keep up, I have a million textbooks and the like, and I try and at least go through the example problems for them, but it's pretty easy to fall behind in that stuff.
While a GP should keep up to date with ulcer research, and "I'm busy!" isn't a great excuse when serious pain and/or lives are on the line, but it's something I at least understand better now.