Learning the undesirable
I’m about as much for agile development and free choice of processes as one can be. I’ve spent much time reading up on this topic, as I find it inspiring and generally fun. To get a broader view of the real world, I signed up for a Software Process Improvement (SPI) class at my university this semester, which is basicly just about CMM. I keep justifying the course by telling myself that it is good to know more about CMM than just knowing that it is about getting the organization from level 1 to 5. It probably is, but reading the curriculum of the course is about as horrific as it can be. Luckily about 50% of the curriculum is reflective on the underlying principles. Some articles even have an agile perspective – but still – reading praises after praises of something I find terribly misunderstood makes me want to tear the hair out of my head.
I find it so much harder to learn this stuff than when I read litterature that inspires me. I just finished a 15 page article, which took me around 1 hour due to the many breaks in the reading. It wasn’t boring, but as I did not agree with the article, my mind started to wander. Suddenly I found myself looking something else up google. Normally, I can just keep reading and reading as I get hooked to an inspiring text – but this is plain torture.
It annoys me that the price of learning what I am not inspired of is so high.