Ask HN: Programming language power and 10 years to mastery • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Programming language power and 10 years to mastery

#41

Post by silentbicycle » Wed, Apr 22, 2009, 12:18 PM UTC

mroman wrote: post #38

asciilifeform wrote: post #15

>the 10 year (or 10,000 hours) road to expertise Why is this figure being bandied about as though it were an actual scientific fact?

Because for many folks, myself included, the opinion of a genius such as Norvig is solid enough to be treated as scientific fact.

Am I the only one who finds that kind of unsettling?

This sort of behavior is why, even among scientists, a generation often needs to die out before new ideas can be seriously evaluated. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Rev...)

Re: Ask HN: Programming language power and 10 years to mastery

#42

Post by mroman » Wed, Apr 22, 2009, 12:47 PM UTC

silentbicycle wrote: post #41

mroman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because for many folks, myself included, the opinion of a genius such as Norvig is solid enough to be treated as scientific fact.

Am I the only one who finds that kind of unsettling? This sort of behavior is why, even among scientists , a generation often needs to die out before new ideas can be seriously evaluated. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Rev... )

Hopefully

Edit in reply to your edit:

Norvig's theories and conclusions are most certainly subject to being proven wrong by anyone who can manage to do so. You make it sound as if someone is attempting to force someone else to agree with his theories and conclusions, or to prevent someone from agreeing with opposing (or any other) set of conclusions and theories.

I see no evidence of that, and come think of it, I do not see evidence of that figure "being bandied about as though it were an actual scientific fact", if you can provide evidence to the contrary, please, by all means do so, or better yet, disprove Norvig's theories and conclusions yourself, no one is stopping you.

Re: Ask HN: Programming language power and 10 years to mastery

#43

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 22, 2009, 12:56 PM UTC

mroman wrote: post #42

silentbicycle wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who finds that kind of unsettling? This sort of behavior is why, even among scientists , a generation often needs to die out before new ideas can be seriously evaluated. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Rev... )

Hopefully Edit in reply to your edit: Norvig's theories and conclusions are most certainly subject to being proven wrong by anyone who can manage to do so. You make it sound as if someone is attempting to force someone else to agree with his theories and conclusions, or to prevent someone from agreeing with opposing (or any other) set of conclusions and theories. I see no evidence of that, and come think of it, I do…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Programming language power and 10 years to mastery

#44

Post by mightybyte » Wed, Apr 22, 2009, 2:26 PM UTC

FalconNL wrote: post #6

I can't comment on Lisp, but I've been working with Haskell for about a year or so now, so I'll cover that instead. My personal history goes something like QBasic -> Visual Basic -> PHP -> Java -> C# -> Haskell. Since Haskell is a purely functional language there's no cheating like you could in, say, OCaml. This forces you to learn how to work with immutability, which I have become a big fan of. When working with C#…

You took the words right out of my mouth. I had a bit different language history, but I'm right with you on Haskell. I have always found that it's quickest to just dive in. It's kind of like learning natural languages by immersion...nothing works as fast as dumping yourself in a foreign country where you have no choice but to learn to communicate in their language. Reading some choice books and tutorials can certainly help, but there's really no substitute to writing code.