Mental Model

My friend insists on using rails if we want to do something together. I don't have any argument against rails though, but I don't understand why does he want to use rails. It's time I recognize one idea: mental model.

Mental model is something we build for time. It's the way we perceive the world. If something happens not to be similar with what you often do something, you feel strange. When you were a child, your experience is still so little that you don't consider something natural, your mind is open to everything. When you grow up, your experience grows also, you don't consider something as it is but thinking that everything has its own way of existence. So you form a mental model about the world. The stronger your mental model is, the harder you are open to new thing.

At the first time, I also question a lot about rails. I complained about the installation of execJS while I still don't write any Javascript code. All I did is not to understand the way rails doing, but complain. My mental model was also too strong for me to be open to new thing (not really new though). In other word, I was bias. My friend was bias too. He insists on using tools he is familiar with, stating many obscure and weak reasons.

It's good to have your own mental model because it would be a help in understanding this world faster. Because when you have things to look up, you save the time to do analysis. However, I also learn a hard lesson that my mental model is there to help me look up information / solution faster, not the only way to do thing, and therefore I should be careful using my own mental model to justify others.

Just a random thought for an early morning.

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