The other day, I was having coffee with one of my closest friends, who is a brilliant programmer. He told me something amazing.
“You know, I just don’t think most people are curious at all.”
I was intrigued and asked him to explain.
“Well, a lot of people around me don’t even look stuff up in Google.”
I was flabbergasted.
He explained that a lot of times people will ask him things and he will turn around and just Google for the answer and then tell them. He runs a small software company and had to explain this to his people.
I was blown away.
He then explained how other friends and family just aren’t very often curious enough to look anything up themselves on Google or in books or anything.
For a bit of context, both he and I read a lot of books, write a lot of code, and spend hours each day using Google. Both of us are successful, expert-level programmers at this point.
It was an enlightening conversation and we both came to the conclusion that one of our real super powers is our ability to use Google and books and other sources of information to solve problems. And critically … we are both curious enough to do that for ourselves!
The average person often isn’t curious enough to even go on Quora and ask a question. Now, you might think that’s crazy (being that you are reading this on Quora), but consider this super interesting fact …
A popular writer sells thousands of books, or maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of books (fewer than say 100 ever sell a million), a popular Quora writer gets millions of article views, but a popular television or movie personality will be watched and listened to BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of times.
Pick something like The Avengers. Those movies have been watched billions of times by now.
That is a long-winded way of saying that people would rather be sitting down watching a movie or TV show than they would do just about anything else with their free time.
So, most people aren’t nearly as curious as they are willing to watch TV and movies.
However, the handful of people who are curious about things have a tremendous knowledge advantage over basically everyone else. While everyone else is being entertained, the curious are using Google, YouTube, etc. to learn things and solve problems and ultimately improve their life.
Programmers are no exception to this. The curious ones use Google a lot more than the non-curious programmers. Thus, they get a knowledge advantage and are more likely to become the experts.
Those of us who have reached a level of expertise in the field of software development all have a pretty high effectiveness at using Google, Stack Overflow, and traditional books to build a knowledge advantage.
At this particular point in history, that knowledge advantage is extremely valuable.
-Brian
P.S. I write about code and career issues elsewhere too …