Pottery Challenge

(Forgive the lack of source -- I'll hopefully fix this, soon) Perhaps David Bayles & Ted Orland's Art & Fear, ISBN 0961454733 ? Or perhaps you read it here on Wiki -- ArtAndFear ?

A pottery teacher told half his class that their grade will depend on one single piece that they'll produce at the end of the term.

He told the other half that their grade will be based on the volume of all the pieces they create.

Which half do you think produced better work by the end?

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This analogy seems to extend to programmers. Maybe it's better to just hack your way through problems (you'll learn elegance over time) rather than to insist that every step be elegant.

Interesting challenge. Had I not been in a pottery class that was graded by the weight of work produced, I'd have guessed that the "volume" group would produce better work, since they might feel freer to experiment. In my class, the grading philosophy had the effect of separating people into two groups: those who wanted the grade, and those who were interested in the craft. There wasn't much overlap. The grade group produced a lot of weight, very little of which as any good. The "craft" group produced much better stuff, though to keep the weight up they often baked their failed experiments (since even crappy pottery can be used as a surface to test new glaze formulations).

There's on obvious parallel to being graded based on the number of LinesOfCode produced. -- DaveSmith

That's bizarre, I read this page about five times before I realized it wasn't a "Poetry Challenge". I even really enjoyed the strange analogy there of "crappy poetry can be used as a surface to test new glaze formulations"... I would suggest, by the way, that for a student, trying out a lot of ideas as quickly as possible will lead to the best results as far as learning goes. I don't think a beginner student would know enough about what and how to make things to be able to come up with a single piece they were properly satisfied with at the end. Meanwhile, a professional or at least experienced person can implement their ideas without having to fight their skills (as much).

The best pottery instructor I've ever had starts his beginning students out with the assignment -- Throw 20 cylinders, each taller than a $100 dollar bill, before you ever keep a piece. I think this is a great first assignment for several reasons. First, it impresses upon the student that all wheel thrown shapes originate from the cylinder and you shouldn't waste any time with anything else until you have mastered it. Second, it teaches the student to let go of the need to create a certain piece and gets them through to the concept of the process - pots are a by product of the process of throwing as opposed to throwing for the sake of completing a certain pot. I am not throwing a teacup. I am perfecting my ability at Teacup,with the cup produced being an incidental. Third, it teaches them not to waste clay by keeping crap - throw it until you've got it right instead of wasting your time trimming, firing, glazing, etc.

Instead of mass quantities of pottery, consider mass quantities of photographs:

"Everyone is born with 10,000 bad pictures inside. You have to take all the bad ones before you can start taking the good ones." -- Andrew Koenig http://www.talkaboutphotography.com/group/alt.photography/messages/6277.html

Instead of mass quantities of pottery, consider a steaming pile of text:

NaNoWriMo? http://NaNoWriMo.org/