Oh wow, where do I even start? “Badass – Making Users Awesome” by Kathy Sierra is a truly enlightening read. It contains ideas I’ve never heard before in the very accessible style of the “Head First” books. Sierra makes the case that in order to build a great product and a loyal customer base you have to make your users better in the use of the domain your product is in. If you make a marketing tool, make your users better marketers. IDE? Help them advance their coding craft.
Towards that end she devotes about half the book to explain how humans acquire skills and become experts. I got so carried away that I condensed it into a Wall-Skills 1-pagers. But it can’t possibly do justice to the book, so read it. It’s very insightful!