Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

vanadac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 371 posts

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#141

Post by [deleted] »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #54
austenallred wrote: post #18

I am miles away from Eric or Linus, but the "curse of the gifted" is very real. Thankfully I wasn't smart or gifted enough that I could ride it for long, but when it comes to math and problem-solving I rode it well into my high school years. I never learned to do algebra "by the book," because I didn't need to. Or maybe because I wasn't smart enough to. The math teacher would teach "3x + 6 = 9." Basic algebraic probl…

We home schooled our kids prior to high school and one of the more interesting challenges was this 'doing the steps' part. My eldest was very much like you, look at the problem, tell you the answer. Which was 99% of the time correct, and 1% of the time wrong. She was really annoyed that we focused on that 1% but eventually we got to the point where by writing down all the steps you could then see where in your thinki…

[deleted]

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#142

Post by SamuelMulder »

mathattack wrote: post #29

I wish I saw the response. That said, the "curse of the gifted" manifests itself in a lot of ways. One problem is also that "less gifted" see the "gifted" and say, "If they don't have to be disciplined, why do I?"

Linus wisely declined to respond to this extremely condescending comment by someone who was out of their depth and didn't clearly understand the issue at hand.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#143

Post by onedognight »

Aqueous wrote: post #20
sp332 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not?

joke - I can imagine Linus grudgingly beginning to use version control, but never admitting that Raymond's rather pointed tough love led him to do it.

Linus wasn't against version control. He thought that CVS and SVN (the leaders at the time) were just not beneficial enough for his use case. The kernel developers worked with "patches" as their unit of work and neither of these could handle them well. More fundamentally they were centralized and Linus had experience from watching the BSDs and knew that a centralized version control was actually worse than none. He both explicitly didn't want to have anymore authority or convenience than any other developer and at the same time wanted absolute authority over his own version. Neither of these were possible with CVS/SVN.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#144

Post by SamuelMulder »

eitland wrote: post #59
ajarmst wrote: post #21

Shit. An ESR ego dump. Head for the shelters.

No, I just read it and like many other things ESR said it is well thought out, friendly and helpful. Please note how ESR again and again ranks Linus (the second coming of Ken) higher than himself (old fart) while still trying to convey som hard won experience.

ESR is being extremely condescending and patronizing. I don't consider that friendly or helpful. He's giving tons of hand-wavy pop psychology in response to a technical issue on which he's out of his depth. His "experience" was not with anything the size and complexity of the Linux kernel and was not particularly relevant. He does like to set himself up as the wise old mentor to people who don't really want or need to listen.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#145

Post by Mz »

mathattack wrote: post #29

I wish I saw the response. That said, the "curse of the gifted" manifests itself in a lot of ways. One problem is also that "less gifted" see the "gifted" and say, "If they don't have to be disciplined, why do I?"

Another problem: Many gifted people are unreliable in very important ways which seriously undermine the value of what they have to offer. (I have personally spent most of my life wrestling with this, compounded by health issues and other issues. I am 48 and only just now getting to a place where I think I can get past that issue.)

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#146

Post by tempestn »

austenallred wrote: post #18

I am miles away from Eric or Linus, but the "curse of the gifted" is very real. Thankfully I wasn't smart or gifted enough that I could ride it for long, but when it comes to math and problem-solving I rode it well into my high school years. I never learned to do algebra "by the book," because I didn't need to. Or maybe because I wasn't smart enough to. The math teacher would teach "3x + 6 = 9." Basic algebraic probl…

I was lucky enough to get hit by this early. I always cruised through math with very little effort, doing any required homework in the 5 minute break before class, etc, and getting near 100%. In grade 9, I didn't fail hard or anything, but I did struggle with the final exam, and ended up with a B in the course. Fortunately that was enough of a wake-up for me, and at that point it was still early enough to correct course without a massive upheaval. I'm thankful I didn't continue to cruise until hitting a real wall in university.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#147

Post by smky80 »

bluedino wrote: post #47
austenallred wrote: post #18

I am miles away from Eric or Linus, but the "curse of the gifted" is very real. Thankfully I wasn't smart or gifted enough that I could ride it for long, but when it comes to math and problem-solving I rode it well into my high school years. I never learned to do algebra "by the book," because I didn't need to. Or maybe because I wasn't smart enough to. The math teacher would teach "3x + 6 = 9." Basic algebraic probl…

I did the same thing and would get 0 credit for assignments or tests because I didn't "show my work". It made the 15 year old me furious and I basically swore math off after that.

This stuff makes me laugh looking back on it. Also teachers saying stuff like, "If you do all of your homework, no matter what you will get at least a B."

Pretty much high school was an obedience test. "Monkeys, if you do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you, I will rate you all 'Above Average'."

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#148

Post by lesterbuck »

bunderbunder wrote: post #103
ejk314 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Straight As can mask a lot of problems. I've got a room mate who was put ahead a grade in middle?late-elementary school and missed the whole foundation of algebra. They did so because he got straight A's so obviously he's smart enough; he could just skip that. (They promised to give him a text book so he could learn on his own that summer, but never got around to giving it to him.) Of course, he started struggling i…

I have never, ever, ever met someone who was well-served by skipping a grade. Myself included. Ever. Skipping a grade means giving up a full year of education. If that proposition doesn't give you pause, you probably don't have enough respect for the value of education. Even if you you get absolutely nothing out of that year aside from the soft skills you develop by sitting in a class with other kids and listening to…

There are all sorts of valid reasons for skipping a grade. They can even be social! After fourth grade in the Virginia suburbs of DC, my father was high on stock options from Litton and Teledyne (not quite FU money) and got a wild hair to move our family to St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands (license plate motto: "Vacation Adventure"). The pubic schools were a disaster, so I ended up in a Lutheran school, where I was the only white kid in the class. I guess I was doing too well on the tests, because I was getting beat up everyday at lunch. Suddenly I'm in sixth grade, where the class had a handful of other white children, and generally a more enlightened, or at least less violent, outlook.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#149

Post by nswanberg »

tieTYT wrote: post #128
nswanberg wrote: post #65

For those curious about the context: https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/23/97 Note that noone replied to Eric and the thread continued on. Also go back and read some of Linus's posts before this. Eric writes using vague generalizations about age and experience; Linus writes with specifics about his experience with the kernel. The former style makes for popularly read posts but the latter seems much more effective. Also, co…

How did your first link give context? It seems to be the same content as the OP.

The menu on the left in the link I posted shows the thread. I saw no way to see that in the original link.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#150

Post by steven2012 »

bunderbunder wrote: post #103
ejk314 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Straight As can mask a lot of problems. I've got a room mate who was put ahead a grade in middle?late-elementary school and missed the whole foundation of algebra. They did so because he got straight A's so obviously he's smart enough; he could just skip that. (They promised to give him a text book so he could learn on his own that summer, but never got around to giving it to him.) Of course, he started struggling i…

I have never, ever, ever met someone who was well-served by skipping a grade. Myself included. Ever. Skipping a grade means giving up a full year of education. If that proposition doesn't give you pause, you probably don't have enough respect for the value of education. Even if you you get absolutely nothing out of that year aside from the soft skills you develop by sitting in a class with other kids and listening to…

I skipped a grade and I haven't had any problems whatsoever. I was the youngest kid in my classes, but luckily I was relatively big, so I was never physically bullied. I was at the top of my class throughout high school, so in retrospect it worked out great for me because I probably would have been bored being held back by a year.
Post reply on HN