Curiosity killed the cat, right? I bet if the cat had anything to say about it, his mindset was still worth it.

I was recently thinking about what drove me to become a programmer when I was asked if it’s hard to write code. I realized that the range of understanding necessary to stop any career from being akin to magic is narrow. With some basic understanding of something, you can start learning the rest of it. I came to the conclusion that programming was one of many occupations that could be a natural good choice for my curious personality.

I grew up in a family environment that fostered creativity and imagination. My dad was always repairing the house and the cars instead of hiring people, and my mom was always helping us excel in art class and teaching us how to cook. Questions were always answered as deeply as I was interested in taking them. Taking apart the working hair dryer was frowned upon, but my dad would dive right in and help me see what was inside that old broken printer. That evolved into a better understanding of how the world worked in general, and a few specific interests in particular. From that came the realization that once I understood how something worked, I could make similar things myself. Applying the same mentality to computers quickly drew me in, as there’s limitless room for experimentation in any one computer field.

Curiosity can be risky. Some devices can break if you don’t know how to open them, and some software can stop functioning if you’re unfamiliar with the effect some options have. In a running production environment, there should be a good reason to be digging into the internals of a system if you’re not already familiar with the processes, with uptime and backups kept close in mind. There are times and places that are better to find your answers, so choose carefully. That’s a major advantage to working as a developer. As a developer you should ideally be setup so that your work cannot effect the running production system, so you’re free to experiment.

Even if you can’t investigate a question of yours right away, don’t dismiss it as unimportant. With curiosity and the willingness to act on that curiosity comes an understanding on how something works or is constructed. With that understanding comes the ability to work with that something, troubleshoot it, repair it, and potentially duplicate and change it. You also get a basis to begin investigating deeper related curiosities. The ripple effect of learning the method for understanding of principles is endlessly and infinitely useful, and it all starts when you have a question to ask. There is no stupid question, because every time a question is answered your understanding increases, and your ability to ask a more important question grows.

So choose carefully how you ask your question, but never let a question go unasked. It can only lead to better things. It ended up leading me to a rewarding and interesting career. I believe that investing in curiosity heavily outweighs the risks. Where would the world be if we didn’t?

This entry was posted by Chris Chatelain on Monday, November 15th, 2010 at 11:58 am and is filed under Linux System Administration, Random Musings, Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.