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*facepalm*
Aug. 4th, 2004 05:15 pmThe end of today's workday is punctuated with Cognitive Dissonance, and partial resolution thereof. Generally, when I'm trying to grasp a concept, I try to get the general idea first, then apply it.
UML, the Unified Modeling Language which is currently a reasonably standard way to represent the design process, _seriously_ disagreed with that method to the point that until today, I really didn't grasp solidly how to make it work for me.
The problem made itself clear to me. I hate buying books that teach me how to solve a tiny little problem in a general tool's domain as my only book in said domain; I should grok the general before zooming in on the specific.
Unfortunately, the basic UML books teach something so general it lacks all context - nothing to grab hold of to figure out how to represent my ideas in a standard way - it's like someone being handed a computer (for the first time in their life) and being told to make their resumé on it. No context, no idea where to start.
So I've got a book I'm borrowing that's specifically solving Java problems in UML. Suddenly it all makes a significant amount of sense, now that I've got something to latch onto. And that's where the CogDis comes in - I always like to have examples in my learning- without examples, it's just context-free concepts with nothing to latch on to, and I get frustrated. Why, then, was I not connecting a lack of context with my problems before, and moving to something specific? Dunno.
Anyway, mischief managed, I'm off to plan doom. and food. Foody doom.
UML, the Unified Modeling Language which is currently a reasonably standard way to represent the design process, _seriously_ disagreed with that method to the point that until today, I really didn't grasp solidly how to make it work for me.
The problem made itself clear to me. I hate buying books that teach me how to solve a tiny little problem in a general tool's domain as my only book in said domain; I should grok the general before zooming in on the specific.
Unfortunately, the basic UML books teach something so general it lacks all context - nothing to grab hold of to figure out how to represent my ideas in a standard way - it's like someone being handed a computer (for the first time in their life) and being told to make their resumé on it. No context, no idea where to start.
So I've got a book I'm borrowing that's specifically solving Java problems in UML. Suddenly it all makes a significant amount of sense, now that I've got something to latch onto. And that's where the CogDis comes in - I always like to have examples in my learning- without examples, it's just context-free concepts with nothing to latch on to, and I get frustrated. Why, then, was I not connecting a lack of context with my problems before, and moving to something specific? Dunno.
Anyway, mischief managed, I'm off to plan doom. and food. Foody doom.
