Grey. Color Grey.

Decades ago (yea, I know…) there was an online discussion forum topic where someone asked a question along the lines of: if you had to define a (programming) skillset by categorizing them into four categories of Beginner, Intermediate, Expert, and Guru, what would you say the skills are required for each? 

The community at the time was very active and had a whole lot of worldwide experts actively engaging in compelling discussions, and this was no different. Within a day or two, dozens of well-respected community leaders, award-winners, authors, and pretty much anybody of note within this particular development discipline were accumulating responses to this lively question. 

For the most part, the responses consisted of generally well-respected experts offering their long-winded thinking (don’t we all love an opportunity to talk about our passion?) on what a developer at each stage would be able to do, act like, recognize, so on and so forth. They ranged from paragraphs to essays, with good, solid critical thinking behind the answers, and it sparked much discussion in furtherance of the topic (with the usual few tangential replies) and in general, added its piece of history to the building of community knowledge, and was all in all a Good Thing. 

Then, out of nowhere, along comes one of our more reserved resident experts… a man of few words, but whose words we tend to pay attention to. And amidst dozens of highly detailed, well-thought-out expert replies to this engaging question, he offers the following four lines: 

• Beginner: wonders why everything is grey
• Intermediate: likes to make pretty colors
• Expert: leaves everything grey
• Guru: lives on a mountain in Tibet 

I, at the time thoroughly enjoying all the pretty colors I could make, received this sage and impressively succinct advice like a hammer to the head. Intently skimming through all the prior replies and trying to be as sponge-like as possible amidst the myriad of excellent information presented, this powerhouse of wisdom stares me in the face and captivates me. I could feel these huge wheels in my head starting to turn, slowly, and for one of the very few times in my life this thickly palpable epiphany of huge gears that I think must be those of a deeper wisdom, go slamming into their next position and my perspective of things from then on drastically changed. Call it a start to the Path of the Grey, if you like. 

They say it takes ten thousand hours to master a craft, and it’s probably fairly true and can be generally applied to most crafts. I feel like this advice is much the same: it can be applied to most things: 

• Beginner: everything looks so dull and boring, why don’t we do it this way, and that way, and whatever 
• Intermediate: I know how to do things and I love doing things!  I’m going to do all sorts of things! 
• Expert: hmmm… turns out all those things I learned to do and loved doing weren’t really necessary at all in the broad scheme of things and only served to complicate matters. At least now I’ve screwed up enough stuff to know where the constraints are.  Apparently, Grey has a deeper meaning that takes a decade to really see… 
• Guru? Never been to Tibet, sorry. 

 (Ace, whose last name I never did learn (or even if Ace was his real name or some moniker), I’m sure I’ve told you before, but in case you happen to be around and come across this – thanks for being one of those giants upon whose shoulders I was lucky enough to stand).