This is akin to how a society comes to understand something and why genius ideas sometimes take so long to become accepted. I believe "context" is the underlying principle here.<p>Arthur Schopenhauer said, "All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; Third, it is accepted as self-evident."<p>If you present a truth to someone whom doesn't have sufficient context for what you are saying, it may seem outrageous and ridiculous to them because the gap between their understanding and the insight you presenting is too great.<p>They would have to build up their understanding of the context around it until it expands to a point where they find a connection to what they already know. Then they can start to relate to it and eventually they may see it as self evident.<p>Jeff Jonas has a great metaphor for explaining context in terms of puzzle pieces and how it relates to big data (see this short TechCrunchTV segment - <a href="http://www.techcrunch.tv/watch/s4ZnZyMTrtWTaKSxWF2WEPPXkBtMjZc3#ooid=s4ZnZyMTrtWTaKSxWF2WEPPXkBtMjZc3" rel="nofollow">http://www.techcrunch.tv/watch/s4ZnZyMTrtWTaKSxWF2WEPPXkBtMj...</a>).<p>This is how Richard Feynman approached problem solving -- he wanted to connect new ideas to what he already understood and understand the context of everything around it:<p>"It's not quite true that Feynman could not accept an idea until he had torn it apart. Rather, the idea could not yet be part of his way of thinking and looking at the world. Before an idea could contribute to that worldview, Feynman wanted to turn over the idea, to see why it was true, from any angle that he could find...In other words, he wanted to connect a new idea to what he already understood and thereby extend his understanding" (<a href="http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/08/how-richard-feynman-thought/" rel="nofollow">http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/08/how-richard-feynman-t...</a>).<p>Once you surround a new concept with enough puzzle pieces, it attaches to what you already know and then eventually it becomes obvious.
> I remember that in 7th grade when I tried to teach myself programming for the first time, I didn’t realize that you were supposed to reuse variables. I would just create a new variable for every single value I needed to store. Boy does that seem stupid looking back.<p>What? Making new variables is better. The compiler will generally figure out the scope of variables and re-use the space taken by variables.<p>This tends to suggest that at least for him, the functional/immutable meaning of variables was more natural.
Ha! Being obvious to you does not mean you truly understand it.<p>At the start of my PhD my argument was obvious to me, but it's taken many years of hard work to turn that implicit understanding into an explicit, proper understanding (and I'm not fully there yet).
Edward De Bono has long said that "Every valuable creative idea will always be logical in hindsight."<p>Also "What is obvious in hindsight may be invisible in foresight."<p><a href="http://www.edwdebono.com/msg19k.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.edwdebono.com/msg19k.htm</a>
Good article. I've had very similar experiences looking over my old code from several months ago. Even basic concepts like procedural abstraction I've only learned about and put into practice recently; in the past I may have used it but wasn't consciously aware of it and didn't do it consistently. And yet I was able to write a lot of awesome working software (that was hard to read and maintain).<p>Sometimes I think I would have been better off with a little theory at first, but then I wonder if I would have even developed the passion without the immediate joy of creation.
interesting, although there's plenty that seems obvious but upon deeper inspection one realizes he doesn't understand it at all. maybe that's true understanding?<p>quick example - you hold a ball and let it go. "obviously" it drops, but think about it - why did it drop and I'm pretty sure even the most advanced string theorists couldn't explain definitively why it went towards the ground.<p>"true knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing" - socrates
This is part of the trouble with patents.<p>You can't patent obvious things. But once someone invents something it suddenly seems obvious, and people ridicule the idea of patenting it.
"...Truly Understand..."?<p>Sigh... It seems author doesn't yet have the breadth of experience to know there are many different levels of understanding appropriate to many different fields, tasks and kinds of mastery.