The Experts, Pt. 1

In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

-- Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

I have used that quote before, only about a month ago, and I'm sure I will use it again. It's one of my favorites. We have a lot of experts around. I've known some of them. It's a major achievement when a person gains a reputation of genuine expertise in his or her chosen field.

When I reflect on my past, I can boast of having gained sufficient respect for my own expertise that I was allowed into the inner circles of development efforts that resulted in the latest edition of the operating system known as Windows Vista® (and Windows Live®, too, by the way). I have written many thousands of lines of code as my part of that effort, and if we discard false showings of either humility or pride, I can be considered an expert repository of knowledge that's of no small importance to our world.

I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had in the past, and perhaps will again in the future, to acquire and build on that reputation in the interest of stretching the boundaries of the digital aspects of our lives. The sales figures of Windows Vista® attest, hopefully, to real acceptance of our efforts, and the promise of Vista® for its advancements and support for new and exciting possibilities of working with information and communicating it to others. It all could have been done without me, of course, but it couldn't have happened without The Experts.

At Microsoft, there is a very healthy respect for expertise. The amazing people who can navigate comfortably through the labyrinthian core of Windows source code with deep understanding and respect for the intentions and far-reaching impact of seemingly obscure subroutines and branches have my deepest respect. They are the foundation, and theirs are the shoulders whereon we stand as we explore those possibilities they've helped to enable. And I've been often amused when the experts are pulled up short by a novice whose question the experts might choose to reject.

Innovation at Microsoft has always been a collaborative effort between the experts and the novices. It's an ideal laboratory for examining the compartmentalization of thinking, and the frequently encountered "inside-the-box" limitations of standardized thinking. Fortunately for Microsoft developers, we have frequently been forced to come to grips with those limitations, and to reach out in innovative directions that challenge our mental routines. That's an experience not to be minimized, and I bring that element of my background to this effort with unchecked enthusiasm.

This is part 1 of my rant on The Experts. I have much more on this topic bouncing around in my head, but it's almost time for the #1 Ohio State Buckeyes to play Penn State (can you tell I was born and raised in Ohio?), so I'll stop for now. I'll pick this up again within the next posting or two.

I want to leave a link to a short blog I posted today on my.barack.obama. I've already stated my support for his campaign, and that I maintain a small, more "politically-correct" blog there on his web site. The theme of that post is very relevant to this topic, so if you'd like to read that as well, here it is: When Will We Learn?