It’s not about ego … it’s about knowledge

Take a quick look at this blog post by Jonathan Lewis

https://jonathanlewis.wordpress.com/2017/12/30/nvarchar2/

Anyone that has been working with Oracle for any length of time probably knows that Jonathan has a great depth of knowledge in the Oracle database, and is a regular blogger.  But this post is a good example to inspire anyone that is working with Oracle (or any technology for that matter) to start blogging and sharing their experiences with the community, no matter what their level of experience is.

If you read the post, you’ll see that Jonathan presented a well-crafted test case, and presented a hypothesis about NVARCHAR2 and potential side effects of adding columns of this data type to an existing table.

Turns out the hypothesis was wrong, and the observations were unrelated to NVARCHAR2 at all.  A comment from a reader pointed out the true cause of the side effect.

But here’s the important thing.

Has the blog post been deleted ? No

Has the comment been deleted ? No.

Publishing information for the community to digest is not (as we say in Australia) a pissing contest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pissing_contest) to show who is the smartest or the fastest or the cleverest.  It is about collectively growing the knowledge base of one’s self and the community.

So don’t be afraid to publish your experiences so that all may benefit.  If your findings or claims are incorrect, then good people in the community will correct you gently and professionally.  And those not-so-good people that choose to point out errors in a condescending or derogatory tone…well….they’ll be doing a lot more damage to their online reputations than they could ever possibly do to yours.

Happy New Year!