We make mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes. Some times we are aware of them, some times we are not: looks like putting the blame of mistakes in someone or something is part of our nature. It's a pity, because we let pass by lots of learning opportunities.

Flickr picture by srslyguys

We software engineers are lucky enough of being faced in our trade with lots of mistakes that we cannot blame in any one but ourselves. Of course, some mistakes allow allocating blame on our customer, our team, our tools... My teammates often hear me cursing loudly Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds, but they know I'm jocking: we are experienced enough to know that select isn't broken. When writing code, you rarely can put the blame on someone/something else unless you are a pathological liar; that's good.

I would like to think that having to face our daily mistakes helps us weaken our blame-someone-else voice in other areas of our life, but, honestly, I don't have any evidence about it. But, just in case, I'd like my kids to learn the we make mistakes, we learn from them lesson/mindset, and this has been one of the main drivers in getting our new home pet, a Lego Mindstorms NXT Robot.