We Don’t Need Nerds. We Need Builders.
Nothing compares to math and programming when it comes to backwards teaching. Nobody comes out of schooling thinking either of these is a particularly creative discipline. Yet real-world math and programming only look like their scholastic counterparts on the surface.
Languages only use rules insomuch as they liberate the speaker to bring about something new. The mindless symbol-shuffling promulgated by today’s teachers is as impaired as their ability to create.
Language is about expression. If you aren’t *creating* something then you aren’t speaking the language. People don’t communicate through thoughtless adherence to rules. People connect by making subjective choices and personal narratives.
Real-world math never has one answer, and there is no *way* to produce the answer. The practitioner chooses their next steps among countless possibilities, and decides what “done” looks like. It is almost entirely idiosyncratic, instinctive.
Programming is not there to force “best practices” or sterile patterns. It’s there for expression, to create, to build. There is no *way* to produce something that connects with people. If your beautiful code makes ugly software, you wrote ugly code.
The fields of math and programming are chock full of nerds who can’t build, can’t express themselves, and pass on their social disabilities to students who graduate as impotent as their professors.
The practices rejoiced by academics and the cogs of industry were not found by those reciting textbooks. They were discovered by craftsmen. It is the incapable who flock to ivory towers to recite dead fundamentals and speak of men greater than them.
Choosing to hide behind the discoveries of others, reciting exhausted proofs and rehearsed theories, adds nothing to future generations. To not embark on your own adventure is to preserve cowardice and incompetence.
We don’t need nerds. We need builders.
