Doing beats reading

Praxis over theory any day.

You don’t expect someone to learn to play piano perfectly if they only read about playing the piano. They need to know the theory and apply the theory with practice: praxis.

Reading about software development is always interesting. It provides stories and ideas of things you might do when you develop that app you’re thinking about. It can illustrate what can go wrong, and how you might avoid that.

Doing the work yourself is also good. This teaches you personal lessons – you did the work after all – that you will remember going forward. You will also have stories to share with others too.

Combining the two of these into praxis: applying the theory with practical work is always the preferred option. You can read about the theory and pick a path to attempt. You can then start the work and see what the theory left out, or seems to work differently for you in your context.

Reading about team collaboration only gets you so far. People need to experience it to learn it. They need to work in a collaborative team. As part of that the team needs to experiment with collaboration: do some pairing, put meetings into calendars, and try other ideas too.

This applies to the classroom too

This applies as much to your solo pursuits as it does to the classroom. It is why I always prefer practical work instead of lectures. Offer a short intro about the idea, and then organise a short practical exercise to illustrate the idea in practice.

If there is no space, or time to put the idea in practice, then offer students a chance to discuss the implementation of the idea with the people around them. By sharing the idea and listening to someone else talk about it, they embed it a bit more in their own memory.

Doing the work: applying the theory embeds the idea even better. The team needs to try these ideas. Thinking about them, only goes so far. By applying them they find issues they didn’t think about: both problems, and also benefits that were not previously considered.

Create praxis opportunities for your people

Look at what you’re doing now to guide people in collaboration. See where you can create opportunities for them to apply the theory in an experiential space. This lets them explore the issues before committing more than they’re ready at the time.

If possible, create playful experiences for praxis. Play makes learning faster and more memorable. There are lots and lots of games around software development, so look at what others have done. You don’t have to create that too.

Have fun. Praxis makes perfect, right 😉

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