Dana in Geeksville

Beginner's Mind in Geeksville

Suzuki Roshi, a Zen master, coined the phrase Beginner's Mind. A Beginner's Mind is a mind free of preconceptions, free of judgments. It is a mind of innocence and openness, a mind ready to awaken. With a Beginner's Mind we see what is that rather than what we expect to see.

For the last 7 years or so I've been fortunate enough to be in communication with people who want to learn Java programming. They come to our sites with the Beginner's Mind and full of eagerness. As we learn a programming language, or anything else for that matter, it's important to retain that Beginner's Mind, that mind free of ideas that block what is really there.

I'm one of those people who enjoys being in a constant state of learning, so on the side (meaning outside of my job) I am learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript for building dynamic web sites from a database. I dabbled in PHP before I came to Sun and liked it, mostly because it was one of the first programming languages I had been exposed to.

Yet, I'm finding that even with that short bit of time I had worked with it, I had formed some ideas and opinions about PHP that currently created a startled reaction in me when a co-worker pointed out that PHP is known to have some security issues. What????

I felt a knee-jerk reaction. Silly really. I mean, for Heaven's sake, we are talking a programming language here and such issues need to be researched and addressed! But it was interesting to me how just that little bit of fondness for PHP created a view that had me less open, feeling defensive. That's is not a Beginner's Mind.

So, with much concerted effort I am slipping back into Beginner's Mind and researching the topic with interest and without prejudice. Perhaps at some point I will write about security here and what I learn. I'm also interested in learning from all of you about which languages you feel are the most secure, which ones you like but are less secure.

In Geeksville, the land of so much technology, we have to be careful not to get carried away with our views, with our ideas, because technology, like everything else, is in rapid movement, changing daily, sometimes improving, sometimes deteriorating. But it's a wonderful place to be, always learning, always coming back to the Beginner's Mind with fresh awareness and learning.

Posted at 11:01AM Aug 08, 2008 by dananourie in Learning  |  Comments[1]