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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)

#41

Post by jimbokun »

pavelludiq wrote: post #31

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?

Set a time when you are going to do something, then arrange things so as many distractions as possible are eliminated during that time so you have no other choice but to study, or whatever your goal is. Without distractions, you will eventually get bored enough that you actually work on what you are supposed to be working.

If you failed your first exam, that indicates it is not as boring as you thought. Calculus, specifically, comes up constantly now that I'm trying to understand Machine Learning, for example. Whatever you are studying, if you can figure out what some real world applications are, it should become much more interesting.

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

#42

Post by marr »

pavelludiq wrote: post #31

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?

It's not hard. Just choose to do your schoolwork BEFORE you have fun reading your lisp book. Then you can truly enjoy reading it because you know the b.s. schoolwork is done for the day.

Here is your new mantra: "What is the most PAINFUL thing I have on my list of to-do's?"

Figure that out every hour or so, and go get it done.

(It helps to realize that four or five years is a really short time. I know it doesn't feel that way when it is like 25% of your current lifespan, but really.. it will be over before you know it. And what's more - you'll actually get to enjoy it because you're not flunking out.)

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

#43

Post by Aegean »

I didn't get what this sharing code was about until I read the earlier post: http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0201.h...

I think this is a typical engineering argument and its got nothing to do with curse of gifted etc. If you share code and they divert later on, even if to a small degree, it gets harder and harder to maintain them. That's what linus says, and I do think that is simpler. Linus (and a good engineer) always favors the simpler solution. The more gifted, the more simpler. So ESR is just arguing the other way around.

I see this all the time in hot lkml discussions. It's often the more gifted who sees through to the simpler solution, but others can't. Don't know if it is true for all gifted, but definitely for the best software engineers.

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

#44

Post by timwiseman »

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'.

I hold a bachelor's in math. In my current job, I use basic algebra and trigonometry on a regular basis, and occassionally basic calculus.

I have never had to use the theoretical information or complex analysis directly, but the practice gained in studying the theory and the proofs has helped me indirectly many times in programming. For most people. in depth knowledge of mathematics is of limited use, but in depth knowledge of problem solving gained by studying math can be invaluable.

As you mentioned, it varies wildly by your career path of course.

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

#45

Post by ominous_prime »

jimbokun wrote: post #39
ominous_prime wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Praise them equally for failing, if they worked hard, learned something, and are willing to keep trying."

I Agree. I guess I was lucky in this regard - I learned to love failing, and saw it as a challenge. One of my favorite pastimes, chess, was taken up because I was so bad at it, yet saw that it could be a master-able skill.

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

#46

Post by btilly »

pavelludiq wrote: post #31

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?

Advice. Review early. Review often. Don't review for too long at a time. If you've done it right you won't need to study for the exam.

The key to math is that it builds on itself. If you miss one thing early on, you may not notice then but you'll get killed later. So you need to not just learn the facts, you need to internalize them. Luckily internalizing them is not that time consuming, but it does require being exposed to the same idea multiple times over a period of time.

One thing that I did, for instance, was routinely attempted to prove random theorems from scratch. Any time I failed I tried to figure it out. If I had to I went to the book, but I would mark it down as something I had to review again not too much later.

I figured that if I could write down a proof of the product rule from scratch, I could probably remember the rule. I was right. And not only did I remember the rule, but when I took differential equations a couple of years later I was the only person in my class who could recite off all of the definitions from memory.

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

#48

Post by donaq »

pavelludiq wrote: post #31

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?

There is only one way to handle it if you want to graduate. Grit your teeth and do it. Take it from a guy who's like you and spent 6.5 years in university because he refused to study. I graduated in the end by becoming a sort of hermit before exams. No meeting with friends, redirecting all the non-productive sites I frequented to 127.0.0.1, not going out except when foraging for food, etc. I wish I'd done it sooner, because 1) 2.5 years extra was a bloody waste of youth, and 2) I racked up more debt than my peers, which I am still paying for.

Besides, if you're really smart, you should be able to pass everything just by starting the hermit routine about 2 weeks before your papers. Take that total of 16 weeks (if it's a 4 year course with two major exams per year) as a temp job that makes you ~$12000 - if you take my figure of an extra 2.5 years at $5k per year, which I'm pretty sure is less than what your education is costing you (I'm Singaporean). :)

Don't make the same mistakes I did!

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

#49

Post by billswift »

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…

Another thing that can cause a problem is having to stop work on something for an extended period, then come back to it. I learned, working for an architect, to always take notes on what I was working on. I am plenty smart enough to keep the details for a large remodeling job in my head while doing the drawings, but recreating them after being diverted to a different job for 6 months was a royal pain. So I learned to make notes of every idea I had, rather than just adding it to the next revision of the drawing. And the more literal point ESR made about disciplined study skills has also bitten me several times.

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

#50

Post by billswift »

jimbokun wrote: post #39
ominous_prime wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You need to be careful about the praising for trying bit, especially as they get older:

"Treating like an adult: You're fucking up. Here's how to fix it. Now fix it.

"Treating like a child: You're trying really hard! Good job! It's not the result that matters, it's just that you try!

"(That's actually a functional way to deal with children up to a point. In most cases they can't do a real job. But when they get to the point they can, when they're ready to learn to be adults with adult responsibilities, "it's a good try" should never cut it.)"

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