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You aren't getting any better

robertheaton.com

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Re: You aren't getting any better

#41

Post by NickPollard »

happimess wrote: post #36
Dn_Ab wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After 15 years, my recipe for getting better. Remain curious and constantly confused. Do not use 'to be' verbs when describing interests or skills. Oh and most important. To do it all for fun not because you want to 'improve' yourself. The rest follows.

I'm curious, would you elaborate on your reasons to avoid "to be" verbs?

There's a form of English called E-Prime [1] that does this, the idea (I believe) is to clarify what you mean and be clear about how your ideas of things came about. It stops lazy assertions and gives you perspective.

For example, you can't say: Lua is better than Python[2]

Instead you say: I prefer Lua to Python

Or perhaps you say: More projects that I rate highly use Lua over Python.

Or maybe: Lua scores more highly on common performance benchmarks than Python

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime

[2] Just an example; I'm not actually saying Lua is better than Python

Re: You aren't getting any better

#43

Post by emiliobumachar »

ebbv wrote: post #35

Not a fan of this post. Link bait title followed by almost zero substance. Stockbroker performance would be an ok point of comparison for another non-deterministic profession, like an athlete. But programming is deterministic. Your code either performs the desired function in the desired way or it does not. Additionally, there are clear skills you can pick up. You either know these things or you don't. You really can…

Important parts of programming are subjective, such as usability, code readability, maintainability, requirements elicitation.

Re: You aren't getting any better

#44

Post by neogodless »

Deep practice (or flow) is being in a state where you have some of the skills you need to complete a task, but aspects of the task are just beyond your current skill level. You need to attempt to complete the task, make small failures, learn from them, try again, and repeat this process until you grow the skills required to complete the task. Some research says that being in deep practice for 10,000 hours will take you to the "expert" level. (Or, what I just said defines itself?)

Of course, don't think that sitting in a chair 9 to 5 will give you the experience and education you need to become better than you were the week before. You must be challenged to stretch and grow, and you need some way to learn from failure. Sometimes you can discover why you failed on your own, and sometimes you need some kind of external feedback from a mentor or teacher.

In hacking, you can learn a lot from what others have learned and written about, from other similar problems and solutions, so you can probably consider a site like StackOverflow.com as one potential source of "external" feedback, as long as you understand the solutions you find there (and even better if you discover and solve problems that weren't previously shared.)

Re: You aren't getting any better

#45

Post by jrajav »

ebbv wrote: post #35

Not a fan of this post. Link bait title followed by almost zero substance. Stockbroker performance would be an ok point of comparison for another non-deterministic profession, like an athlete. But programming is deterministic. Your code either performs the desired function in the desired way or it does not. Additionally, there are clear skills you can pick up. You either know these things or you don't. You really can…

I think you're making a dangerous correlation between the determinism of software and the supposed determinism of skill at software development. Yes, one of the most important aspects of software development is making code that runs correctly, but that is not the only aspect. Even if we focus on that alone, we run into many issues:

- How do we determine whether anything but the most trivial program is correct?

- Are the specifications so clearly defined that you could actually say your program is "correct" assuming that you could reason perfectly about its behavior? If you are the one writing the specifications, you know that the preceding question has no answer, because the specifications are just as hard to match to the problem as the program is to match to the specifications.

- Can a program be said to be complete and production-ready if both it and the specifications are correct? What about security, performance, legacy support, and other concerns?

Correctness, even if you take that alone, is not so simple. Even if it was simple, that's not the only metric for measuring skill in software development, and it's not the only (or even most) important thing to focus on.

Re: You aren't getting any better

#46

Post by namenotrequired »

"Many studies, collected most notably in Geoff Colvin's "Talent is Overrated", find that in a wide range of disciplines experience has absolutely no correlation with efficacy [1]."

You seem to think you're presenting a surprising fact here, but you already explained this in your very first sentence: "hackers have a much greater intrinsic desire to improve their skills than those in other professions."

Re: You aren't getting any better

#47

Post by jcbrand »

Tichy wrote: post #8

Stock brokers are a bad example, because that is essentially gambling. Also playing around with some API will make me better in using that API. What are some meaningful metrics for becoming a better developer? Personally, I'd like to launch more.

Nassim Taleb explains this very well in one of his books (not sure which, Fooled by Randomness or Black Swan).

Assume you have 8 traders and their chance of making a win/loss in a given year is 50% (i.e completely random).

On average, after 1 year, you'll have 4 traders who made money. After 2 years, you'll have 2 and after 3 years you'll have 1.

That one trader can now proclaim loudly that he's outperformed the marked for 3 years in a row. Even though his own influence in this was zero, and he reached it through pure luck.

Luck plays a large role in everyone's life, but for traders much more so, and comparatively for programmers much less.

Re: You aren't getting any better

#48

Post by Dn_Ab »

happimess wrote: post #36
Dn_Ab wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After 15 years, my recipe for getting better. Remain curious and constantly confused. Do not use 'to be' verbs when describing interests or skills. Oh and most important. To do it all for fun not because you want to 'improve' yourself. The rest follows.

I'm curious, would you elaborate on your reasons to avoid "to be" verbs?

There is no science I can point to but I feel using language that way makes it as if the skill has become part of your identity. Makes it hard to detach. So that I insult Ruby or Apple and now I am insulting you. Google is dying means a big part of your self is becoming obsolete. I am a "pythonista/rubyist/haskeller" encourages tribal thinking. Them vs Us. I find this also explains much about flamewars. I don't like.

To avoid that I prefer to say I know Z. I use X instead of I am a X user. I am most skilled in Y not a Y'er. I really like A. It is still hard to see A die but I don't need to defend every affront as if I was the one insulted. I allow only a few things to help define part of my identity. Doing this actively, also triggers to conscious how much I don't want to slip into tribalism or stagnation.

And by being ok with confusion it means I don't fear new things, by being confused it means I'm learning, by being curious I'll actively seek to put my self beyond my ability.

Re: You aren't getting any better

#49

Post by dodolab »

cooldeal wrote: post #21

Please get some contrast and also test your site on computers that don't have retina displays or are not Macs. http://contrastrebellion.com/

I agree. Luckily there are some extensions that help read those kind of pages. On opera I use https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/cleanpages/ I guess you can find some others ext. for others browsers.

Re: You aren't getting any better

#50

Post by petenixey »

namenotrequired wrote: post #46

"Many studies, collected most notably in Geoff Colvin's "Talent is Overrated", find that in a wide range of disciplines experience has absolutely no correlation with efficacy [1]." You seem to think you're presenting a surprising fact here, but you already explained this in your very first sentence: "hackers have a much greater intrinsic desire to improve their skills than those in other professions."

The first sentence seems to be an anecdote based on a specific set of people whereas the mention of Colvin's Talent is Overrated is a presentation of evidence and also a more general pattern. Why do you find the two sentences redundant?
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