Concern about geek/non-geek comic

[librarycarpentry]

Concern about geek/non-geek comic

[ccronje]

My vote is for http://jonudell.net/images/alternate-view-of-automation.png in the Jon Udell blog post. It's a positive way of presenting benefits to all (code creators and code consumers) - 'geek' and 'non-geek' could be replaced by 'coder' and 'code user', or something more creative ;-)

[ccronje]

Hi @allisongofman thanks for your feedback. Have you seen another diagram that could be used, or would you perhaps like to design one?

[libcce]

@allisongofman @ccronje In DST4L, one of the participants created this image http://altbibl.io/dst4l/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/MtProgram.png Is this closer to what you were thinking?

[allisongofman]

@libcce thank you!! Great tone, not sure it covers quite the same point. Maybe https://xkcd.com/1319/ ?

[ostephens]

Jon Udell raised a similar concern about that chart/illustration when it was first published (not in a Carpentries context) and his post at https://blog.jonudell.net/2012/01/09/another-way-to-think-about-geeks-and-repetitive-tasks/ has an alternative diagram. I'm not sure his diagram is perfect, and think it still embeds the idea of geeks & non-geeks (although Jon notes this is unhelpful) but I think it might be a better starting point

https://blog.jonudell.net/2012/01/09/another-way-to-think-about-geeks-and-repetitive-tasks/

[ostephens]

There are also several XKCD comics that play around with the ideas in this chart: Including....

• https://xkcd.com/974/
• https://xkcd.com/1205/
• https://xkcd.com/1319/

and in the same area although less direct I love https://xkcd.com/949/ because I've had those conversations

[ostephens]

+1 @ccronje

I like the term of "toolsmith" Jon uses in the post - someone who can work "alongside the team, chipping away at the never-ending and always-evolving list of manual chores, looking for more opportunities to automate, and exploiting them in an incremental and collaborative way."

The idea of a 'toolsmith' works (for me) with the metaphor of 'carpentry', and I think that library carpentry training can help you become, at least in part, a "toolsmith" (in Jon's terminology) -

It isn't perfect and won't suit all attendees, but I think it is a good argument for developing some of the knowledge and skills taught by LC

[jezcope]

Can I make a vote for https://xkcd.com/1205/ — I think this makes the original point in the most straightforward way.

[ostephens]

Of course we could use both ...

[ccronje]

I liked that one too @jezcope but decided against it because it takes a while to look at the numbers and different units to see a pattern

[ccronje]

@allisongofman what do you think of http://jonudell.net/images/alternate-view-of-automation.png from the blog post https://blog.jonudell.net/2012/01/09/another-way-to-think-about-geeks-and-repetitive-tasks/? It still has the terms geek/non-geek. @ostephens likes 'toolsmith' (from the blog post).

Another option is https://xkcd.com/1205/

[ccronje]

Looking to resolve this issue with the following fix as proposed by @ostephens and @jezcope #55. Thanks!