Experts in their fields are all different, but they usually share this same motto :
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. (Proverb)
How do Expert SAS professionals manage to remember and apply so many options/functions/concepts?
1. I would like to know how do you memorise and manage remember all of it?
Legendary chess champion Capablanca or Alekhine (sources may vary) once replied to a reporter asking him
How many moves ahead he was looking against his opponent, reportedly replied
"I only looked ahead one move, but it was always the best move."
Memory is unimportant. Memorisation is useless. Knowing by heart tens of thousand pages of SAS documentation won't serve you at all
to become an expert.
Sharpen your mind to answer with as much _relevance_ as possible. The personal decision rule you apply to select your choice
does not depend of either how large is your memory, or how fast can you recall accurately some small piece of information.
It depends upon how self-critical you are disposed to be regarding your own work .Self-criticism stands as a synonym for creativity.
Dont'try to memorise, put at work your own way of doing things and test it mercilessly.
To be more matter of fact, study both sample codes and the corresponding documentation, neither one of it independently.
2. Is there a knack you have developed to quickly know where to look?
No. Personally, as a junior developer, I was much inspired by a Senior SAS Coder who applied a subtle blend of innovative technics
with proven ones , and based his technical choices also upon - sometimes unwritten - functional requirements. So I tried to start afresh each time
and begin my journey by looking extensively for SAS code samples already available.
Since Google has become our ubiquitous friend these last years, the only thing which can (could) save me time
would be to learn how to type faster on my keyboard. Playing the piano can help (I suppose).
3. Even if you do, don;t you tend forget whatever you learned just like normal human beings do?
I happen to know someone who possesses a fantastic memory, quite abnormal. He can remember almost instantly every line he as ever read, and
he has read extensively from a very young age. Yet he's more often than not 'aloof' and absent-minded to the point of
forgetting appointments all the time. Sometimes he doesn't even remind the name of the person he's talking to (funny to look at
but embarrassing for the other person). Social forgetfullness can be quite an impairment sometimes; I don't envy the guy.
"While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal." (Karl Popper)
4. How long did it take for you to accomplish what you have so far?years/months?
My accomplishments so far are too few to even mention. Time span doesn't count in my opinion. Some experts I know
have developed amazingly in just a few years time. Other strive for many more years. I don't think their is common 'pace'.
5. If you achieved in a relatively short time, did you slog out reading voraciously for hours losing sleep?
A few year's back, I remember standing up at night when my first daughter was born , reading the MIT Open Course Ware on-line materials (e g . Python introductory course).
That kept me awake then when I needed to. However I cannot recall many things I read and now I would be
unable to run the simplest code in Python, for instance. Sleep deprivation and training your skills are two different things, I guess.
Please provide newbies some healthy and doable tips barring the 5th question, coz if that's the case I am afraid one would need to live a life after all. Make sense eh?
Perfectly sense.
Be what you are, expertise is just but a single word. Take your time to improve your own skills by observing how others have solved differently
than you the same problem. Dig deeper into their solution. Other's ingenuity at work is always amazing.
Some references to go further (Art Carpenter's SAS papers are my best source of inspiration) :
http://www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi23/Training/p275.pdf
http://www.sascommunity.org/mwiki/images/c/ce/A_Walk_Thru_Time.pdf
http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings13/029-2013.pdf
