A related article. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=359551
How To Be Fucking Awesome
31–40 of 76 posts
Re: How To Be Fucking Awesome
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you really spending that much time trying to get better or are you mostly doing the same things over and over again. One of my favorite sayings: "I don't want someone that has the same year of experience repeated 10 times I want 10 different years of experience." PS: If your in the top 5% of coders most people will consider you fucking awesome.
I've been coding since I was 11 (like many people here). I am 29 now. I'd say that I've been trying to get better than myself all the time. I don't think one would do the same things again and again unless it is a sad day job. All I am saying is that may be 10,000 hours is not enough.
Ok, I am 28 and I started coding at 8 (my father was a programmer) but I don't think I really spend more than 100 hours coding before 12, and 1500 by 18, in collage I may have added 2000 hours of real effort, but once I started working I have spent little time learning and more time jumping though hoops. I just started working with the J2EE / Spring / Hibernate world and within 200 hours of effort it seems fairly easy and it's mostly grunt work at this point in time.
So while I am still closing in on those 10,000 hours it's going to take a lot more stretching for me to get there. There was plenty of time I could have spent getting better, but I have written ASM, high and low level networking code, Multi-threaded Apps, desktop apps, code parsers, scientific number crunchers, websites, and mostly I just wonder why other people find it hard.
I don't think of my self as Fucking Awesome but I do think I am close to that point.
Re: How To Be Fucking Awesome
#334 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, you will be fucking awesome.
I can't believe it took me so much time to notice:
365 days a year already includes 7 days a week. So you'd actually need 27.4 hours of practice a day to make it in a year.
Re: How To Be Fucking Awesome
#344 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, you will be fucking awesome.
No. At 4 hours a day, you'll need 2500 days. [6.8 years] If you did it full time (40 hours a week), you'll supposedly be fucking awesome in 4.8 years. If this were true, I should be an awesome programmer. But I know I am not yet one. Far from it. So I call bullshit. (Some popular 'fucking awesome' programmers for reference: Steve Yegge, RMS, John Resig)
Ok, I have no idea how I came up with the 365 days instead of 52 weeks.
Re: How To Be Fucking Awesome
#35Another equally important thing is choosing your battles: you have to not only work hard, but work hard at the right things . I could practice basketball for 10,000 hours, but there's no way I could do it professionally. You have to figure out what your natural abilities are, and work hard in those areas.
If you practiced basketball for 10,000 hours then you would be fucking awesome, regardless of having a contract. The right things don't exist... or have we already forgotten the whole "do what you love" concept?
Loving what you do is necessary, but not sufficient.
What you do should be at the intersection of what you love and what you're good at.
Re: How To Be Fucking Awesome
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been coding since I was 11 (like many people here). I am 29 now. I'd say that I've been trying to get better than myself all the time. I don't think one would do the same things again and again unless it is a sad day job. All I am saying is that may be 10,000 hours is not enough.
Ok, I am 28 and I started coding at 8 (my father was a programmer) but I don't think I really spend more than 100 hours coding before 12, and 1500 by 18, in collage I may have added 2000 hours of real effort, but once I started working I have spent little time learning and more time jumping though hoops. I just started working with the J2EE / Spring / Hibernate world and within 200 hours of effort it seems fairly eas…
Cool!
Re: How To Be Fucking Awesome
#37Time and awesomeness is a correlation, not cause and effect. Sure, talent and time help, but the key ingredient is passion. Without it, you've got a long, painful road ahead of you. With it, you can climb mountains. .
The article gives Bill Gates as an example. According to the article, Gates is a great programmer because he sat in front of the computer for seven years. But Gladwell has it backwards... Gates sat in front of a computer for seven years because he had a passion for programming and that's what lead him to be great.
Re: How To Be Fucking Awesome
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anomalies aren't evidence. The strawberry jam was awesome though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-IoInRUjDM
Anomalies aren't necessarily evidence but in this case, and in many important general cases anomalies can be critically important evidence. He and his career constitute evidence that "height" is not a requirement to be an elite basketball player. It's definitional and not arguable. In science today's "anomaly" is sometimes the evidence that leads to tomorrow's breakthrough.
It's not a requirement but there's a massive correlation between the two.
It's just like when people say they shouldn't worry about monetizing because of Google.
Re: How To Be Fucking Awesome
#39I found this really interesting, because we covered this exact topic in a psychology course that I took while in university, and I think that it is often mis-quoted / mis-used. The conclusion that was drawn from scientific research was that the vast majority of experts all shared a common trait - they all had at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice (not that anyone who practiced for 10,000 hours would definitely…
Practice makes perfect.
Re: How To Be Fucking Awesome
#40I found this really interesting, because we covered this exact topic in a psychology course that I took while in university, and I think that it is often mis-quoted / mis-used. The conclusion that was drawn from scientific research was that the vast majority of experts all shared a common trait - they all had at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice (not that anyone who practiced for 10,000 hours would definitely…
Practice makes perfect.
No, practice makes permanent.