Anybody have good advice for a first year university student who slept through most of high-school, got good grades, and then failed his first calculus exam because he was reading "Practical common lisp", instead of studying? How do i learn to study if i find the subject boring? How do i get disciplined? I know a lot of you have been here, how did you handle it?
Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)
31–40 of 64 posts
Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)
#32Earlier 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…
I've been and to a large extent am one of those in some cases and I can't imagine not using version control, or code sharing, or modularity. I also backup my code in several locations across thousands of miles of earth and ocean.
Look, "Founder only mode" is when the practices of these large corporations with lots of people depending on them are the most valuable, because everything depends on you. There aren't other people who can fill in and do your job. You have to be able to do it all. You can't skimp on any of the areas just because you're just you. Not if you expect anyone to depend on you, including yourself 6 months later when you have no idea what the code you wrote there does anymore.
And you don't want to have to repeat yourself all over the place so you modularize. That's how it's done at the big shops too. It's good practice.
Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)
#33Anybody have good advice for a first year university student who slept through most of high-school, got good grades, and then failed his first calculus exam because he was reading "Practical common lisp", instead of studying? How do i learn to study if i find the subject boring? How do i get disciplined? I know a lot of you have been here, how did you handle it?
No, I do not have any good advice to give you. I had the same problem, and never figured out the answer.
Instead, I was able to squeak by with C-minuses in all of the subjects I found horrendously dull, and make it up with A's in my senior and grad level computer science and psychology courses.
I graduated a month after I turned 21; I think my final GPA was 3.02/4.00. Microsoft hired me a few months later to work on Visual Studio. They never asked about my GPA. In fact, my first manager was a college dropout.
I hope you figure it out because I absolutely do not recommend this path, but it is workable.
Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)
#34Anybody have good advice for a first year university student who slept through most of high-school, got good grades, and then failed his first calculus exam because he was reading "Practical common lisp", instead of studying? How do i learn to study if i find the subject boring? How do i get disciplined? I know a lot of you have been here, how did you handle it?
In my case, it was the reverse. Loved Mathematics, shunned everything else. They had something called a "Distinguished Scholar's Program," which meant I was basically able to design my own curriculum. By the end of the first year, when I'd figured out just how much latitude that afforded me, I was taking only Math classes. Now, I think that left me with a somewhat unbalanced view of the world, and I paid for it later. But if you go and talk to your professors about how much flexibility there is in the degree requirements, you might be pleasantly surprised.
You'll be sorry if you don't learn calculus, though!
Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)
#35Anybody have good advice for a first year university student who slept through most of high-school, got good grades, and then failed his first calculus exam because he was reading "Practical common lisp", instead of studying? How do i learn to study if i find the subject boring? How do i get disciplined? I know a lot of you have been here, how did you handle it?
Tell yourself you're going to do it, trick yourself into thinking you're going to do it, and then actually do it.
I get the most work done when I feel like I "fit the bill" for what someone who is about to get a lot of work done is like. Sort of like "Well, gee... I've got a clean room, and a clean desk, and I got a good night sleep, no distractions, had some caffeine, wont be hungry for a while... There is no way I'm not going to get some work done!" Then I just do it.
I find that starting work is a lot harder than sticking with it, as well. Once I get in to some problem or homework then I find its pretty easy to keep going. So, this thought is good to keep in mind when I'm having trouble starting because I know if I start I wont feel so bad.
I think the most important part is tricking yourself into thinking you're going to do it. For me, it was having a desk and clean enough room that I felt "studious"...but it was also reading books about how to get work done. The advice in the books didn't work for the most part, in my opinion, but because I felt like I was really headed towards "being able to buckle down and get stuff done" and had examples in mind of how I was headed there, I tricked myself into doing it. Then once I actually started doing it, it because easier because I could say "well, I've done it before!"
One last tip: I like reading biographies of impressive, academically accomplished people. Being inspired by other people helps me stick to things I find boring because I want to be like them, and having a good GPA certainly isn't going to hurt anything in my goal of achieving greatness!
Ok, seriously one last tip: listen to music without words. Words distract my thoughts, but I really need to have some music on to keep me from being distracted by all the noises outside my room.
Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)
#36Anybody have good advice for a first year university student who slept through most of high-school, got good grades, and then failed his first calculus exam because he was reading "Practical common lisp", instead of studying? How do i learn to study if i find the subject boring? How do i get disciplined? I know a lot of you have been here, how did you handle it?
Um, keep reading PCL?
How about writing programs to implement and demonstrate the calculus principle du jour?
You have to do a certain amount of grinding. For school, optimize around what grade you'd like to get (the answer shouldn't always be "A") and how grades are calculated. Then optimize around whatever least amount of work gets you that grade.
If it's something important but boring, first build a story about why it's important to you. Then find an interesting way to solve it (whether by writing a program to show it, forming a study group with a hot girl, reading background information on blogs or library books, etc).
Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)
#37Here 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.
Torvalds sort of addresses the issue, http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0241.h... "On the whole, people tend to _want_ to share, because it ends up being the easier "quick hack" in many cases. So I'm not worried about that part overmuch. I'm worried about people who share even when it doesn't make sense. And I'm worried about people having bad interfaces, which makes even sensible sharing end up a…
His reasoning smacks of a religious/political debate: given two complementary destructive human tendencies, we should direct all our concern and condemnation at one, because the one is a seductive vice that threatens to run disastrously out of control, while the other is not so seductive and can be safely left to human judgment. See priggishness vs. debauchery, meanness vs. gullibility, paranoia vs. complacency, etc.
Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)
#38"Your tendency to undervalue modularization and code-sharing is one symptom [of the curse]. Another is your refusal to use systematic version-control or release-engineering practices. To you, these things seem mostly like overhead and a way of needlessly complicating your life." I'd say he came around on version control with git - five+ years later.
At the time I think CVS was the proposed system. Linus said he preferred patches. I'm not sure he was wrong. AFAIK, bitkeeper was designed (not sure to what extent) when Larry got together with Linus and Linus explained how he wanted it to work.
Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)
#39Edit 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…
"Praise them for succeeding"
Praise them equally for failing, if they worked hard, learned something, and are willing to keep trying.
Re: Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)
#40Edit 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…
> "... do your best to make sure your kids are challenged. Praise them for succeeding..."
I especially agree with those two thoughts. I might be inclined append the the caveat that giftedness qua giftedness does not constitute an achievement - does not constitute a success. It is doing, and not being, that counts. While Socrates was surely a brilliant fellow, we'd know almost nothing about him or his philosophy were it not for his equally brilliant but vastly more dynamic pupil. Without the doings of Plato the wisdom of Socrates would have amounted to little of consequence.