Of course, then I proceed to say, “Cool! Let’s try it out.”

I’m a fun person to work with.

Hi Andy,

I agree with you, although logging into a production database can be extremely risky even if you know what you are doing! The sad part is, as developers, they should know what they are doing or have some idea of what they are looking for. As I mentioned in the post, these are the people for which experimenting is most crucial. They need to start broadening their understanding somewhere, in order to be more productive members of the team. From time to time, I’m sure everyone’s worked with the developer who doesn’t understand anything and who no one turns to for resolving mission critical problems. In fact, in my experience they usually get promoted so as they can do less harm to the code 😉

-Scott

I would be the same way if I were tinkering with my car engine (I’m no mechanic). I might go on a website and ask what happens if I tighten the widget valve because I don’t know whether that might permanently break something because I have no clue as to the consequences of that action.

Ditto with hooking up VCRs/DVRs and TVs, as the technologist in the family, you probably get asked questions all the time about hooking this cable to that socket and if that will work. People think that trying it will be the end of the world if they ‘cross the streams’ or something. Again, it’s all down to understanding the consequences and knowing the results you are looking for.