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Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

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Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

#21

Post by aoriste »

presidentender wrote: post #2

I'm so very lucky that a) I just happened to major in math and CS, not just CS and b) my 'giftedness' was only enough through calc 1 in the math program. My foreign language and gen eds were easy, and the CS program didn't expect much of us, but I had to actually try in the higher-level applied math classes. Without that, I'd have been in for a rude awakening when it came time to work for real, and it would have cost…

As for me, I eschewed the applied topics (no ODE's no PDE's) in favor of the "pure" (algebra, analysis, topology, etc) only to discover that, because I had little interest in becoming a professor, most of it would only serve to keep my happily diverted on what are now ridiculously rare lazy Sunday afternoons. In these topics, so long as one is interested in the propositions in need of proof, real study is relatively useless. I first learned what it meant to study in the "real world" - in the lowly field of IT - when the fiat came down the line to transform format X into formats Y and Z, and ensure that changes to one translate to the others, keeping in mind that simultaneous changes may occur, in which case on the 'right' change should be kept. The old dictum is true: there is no substitute for experience.

Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

#22

Post by jasonlotito »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #11

the more gifted you are, the more you can get away with. but that doesn't mean you should be taking the easy path.

The problem is, society as a whole is concerned with the outcome less than the path taken their. If you are able to get an honest A, does it matter that you didn't have to study? If your client asks for X, Y, but not Z, then you give him X and Y, and get paid and move on. After all, you don't want to spend your life working.

Life is about goals in so many ways that for many it's hard to avoid getting there as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

#23

Post by Willie_Dynamite »

While I hesitate to call myself gifted I can recognize some of that. I never really studied in high school, the only homework I ever did was hand ins. University came as a bit of a shock really, and taliking to friends, I know I'm not alone in this. I really wish they had done a bit more to prepare us for higher education, and I suspect dropout rates would go down if they did.

Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

#24

Post by ominous_prime »

lotharbot wrote: post #16

Edit the title to include the year (2000) ? ----- The overall point is solid. Many times, the "gifted" have sufficient brain capacity to be able to track or process fairly complex problems. As such, they see no need for the sort of support structures and habits others use to solve the same problems. Therefore, they don't develop those things in the "natural" way, piece by piece. Instead, they finally run up against a…

Isn't hindsight grand. I never had to study, take notes (or write anything down for that matter), or do homework to get through highschool. College wasn't too difficult, but it was too much of the same, and I couldn't keep with the grind.

> "For some people, that's an obstacle they never overcome."

It's amazingly difficult to create these habits. I often struggle with large projects, where it's impossible to keep it all in my head. The urge to take notes happens too late, or I don't know what to take or how to take it.

A recent project where I'm learning a new codebase and language simultaneously is forcing me to reevaluate how I work. It's almost more than I can mentally handle at once, and even still, I'm brute-forcing it by internalizing everything. I'm taking notes here and there when I think of it, trying different methods; wikis, textfiles, carrying a notepad; but it's slow going.

Parents, teachers, mentors - do your best to make sure your kids are challenged. Praise them for succeeding, but don't let them ride that success through life, because it does end.

Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

#25

Post by gfunk911 »

jwecker wrote: post #13
sjf wrote: post #9

Here is the post in the context of the original thread http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0240.h... . There doesn't seem to be a reply from Linus.

No, and I don't know if he split that driver, but I like to think that Linus took the message to heart (regardless of how he felt about it). The two+ years that followed saw the arrival of a lot of "meta" structure fixes, like bitkeeper (and then git of course), etc. that address many of ESR's concerns.

I love that Linus did what brilliant people do, which is modify the world to better fit how they want to work. I'm sure he modified his own practices somewhat, but he also modified the world by creating Git to enable his preferred workflow.

Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

#26

Post by ajross »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #8

ESR often comes across as unbearably pompous and self-important, but here he strikes a very constructive posture of hard-earned humility and even tough love.

Or alternatively: this was 10 years ago, and the kernel is vastly more complicated now than it was then, running on hardware of a sophistication most of us scarcely imagined. And yet the kernel development model really hasn't changed much.

It may be that ESR was especially humble and constructive in that post. But honestly, I'd argue he was also objectively wrong.

Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

#27

Post by illumin8 »

ajross wrote: post #26
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #8

ESR often comes across as unbearably pompous and self-important, but here he strikes a very constructive posture of hard-earned humility and even tough love.

Or alternatively: this was 10 years ago, and the kernel is vastly more complicated now than it was then, running on hardware of a sophistication most of us scarcely imagined. And yet the kernel development model really hasn't changed much. It may be that ESR was especially humble and constructive in that post. But honestly, I'd argue he was also objectively wrong.

How was ESR wrong? He seemed damn insightful to me. The curse of the gifted is a real thing. We've seen it many times before. Developers that can write 20 times the code of a "mere mortal" but don't think it's necessary to check it back in to version control. Or unit test, or run it through QA, or any of the other things that "mere mortals" need to do.

Sure, you can get away with this when you're operating in "Founder only mode," and you're the sole contributor, but his point is valid. If you don't plan for the point in time when you have hundreds of developers working on several branches of forked code before you reach that point, by the time you do, your project is doomed.

Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

#28

Post by jasonlotito »

ajross wrote: post #26
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #8

ESR often comes across as unbearably pompous and self-important, but here he strikes a very constructive posture of hard-earned humility and even tough love.

Or alternatively: this was 10 years ago, and the kernel is vastly more complicated now than it was then, running on hardware of a sophistication most of us scarcely imagined. And yet the kernel development model really hasn't changed much. It may be that ESR was especially humble and constructive in that post. But honestly, I'd argue he was also objectively wrong.

"But honestly, I'd argue he was also objectively wrong."

Considering how Linux is being developed today, I think Linus disagrees.

Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

#29

Post by zavulon »

sjf wrote: post #10
zavulon wrote: post #7

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense... I never ever studied anything before sophomore year of college. And then when faced with serious large-scale programming problems, and 300 level math, I realized I don't know how to study. It was definitely a struggle, but I'm glad it happened to me early, and not when I entered a "real world".

Depending on your career path, it is unlikely you would have ever encountered that math in the 'real world'.

Actually, for the last two years before striking out on my own, I ended up working on a project involving complex calculations with credit derivatives. And before, I created a side project implementing risk models such as Black Scholes, Monte Carlo, etc. So the math ended up being useful after all.

But yeah, I think even none of the things you learn in college end up being useful to you in "real world", it's all about problem solving techniques you master that apply in any situation.

Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

#30

Post by [deleted] »

illumin8 wrote: post #27
ajross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or alternatively: this was 10 years ago, and the kernel is vastly more complicated now than it was then, running on hardware of a sophistication most of us scarcely imagined. And yet the kernel development model really hasn't changed much. It may be that ESR was especially humble and constructive in that post. But honestly, I'd argue he was also objectively wrong.

How was ESR wrong? He seemed damn insightful to me. The curse of the gifted is a real thing. We've seen it many times before. Developers that can write 20 times the code of a "mere mortal" but don't think it's necessary to check it back in to version control. Or unit test, or run it through QA, or any of the other things that "mere mortals" need to do. Sure, you can get away with this when you're operating in "Founde…

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