When the playing stops and the exhortations begin the learning dries up.

Five (well six) ways to learn.

• Trial and Error; playing with the material.
• Perception of the Object; study of the material.
• Perception of others using; watching their reactions as they use the material.
• Modeling; mimicing the performance of others with the material.
• Exhortation; being directed to utilize and how to use the material.

These are pretty clearly in rank order. The first is far more powerful a learning method than the last. The last is most popular with those that would instruct others.

There is a sixth method.

• Instruction

But it is assembled out of the others along with all the thousands of other frameworks for how to teach.

I’m bemused by how this illuminates the problem of herding cats. In open source you can almost always tell that things are going down hill when folks stop playing with the materials and start attempting various kinds of exhortations. It’s amazing to me how many organizations attempt to put a lid on the playing.