23: Use tools, but be realistic

I played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons when I was in high school. It was a lot of fun.
I wanted to DM. I always struggled with some elements of it. I bought a BUNCH of DM books. I had practically every 2nd edition book. Read them all. I KNEW all of D&D... I still sucked as a DM.

I tried to use the tools to compenstate for a fundamental lacking (I suck at story telling).

Tools for our profession are very similar. If you don't have the basics, a tool isn't going to help you excel. It'll help you get a little further... maybe. Maybe that's enough.

The tool isn't what does the job, its us. The books didn't DM for me, I had all of the knowledge and tools and still stuggled to do the basic job. I could get a little further... but it was never enough.

Our tools are like this.

My favorite tool is ReSharper. It's only gotten to be more valuable as I find new ways to use it. Not because I discover a feature and OMG, I can use this. But I do something manually and thing, "I wonder if resharper does this". I use what I'm already doing and find the tool to improve upon that.

They help - but w/o skill at what they already do, they don't help much.