Is Passion Serendipitously Discovered or Painstakingly Constructed? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Passion Serendipitously Discovered or Painstakingly Constructed?

#11

Post by ams6110 » Wed, Nov 25, 2009, 2:36 AM UTC

presidentender wrote: post #8

angelbob wrote: post #2

You could rephrase the whole article, "Just do anything enough to get good at it. It doesn't matter what you want or like." My response: "yes, it really does."

My response to your response: "no, it doesn't." You have to progress beyond the initial period of total incompetence, where nothing is fun. Your guitar strings buzz mutely, you keep dropping your hand and your opponent punches you in the face, and javac keeps yelling at you about "array index out of bounds." After that, though, the increasing success in the activity becomes a positive feedback loop, increasing your d…

With regards to being a passionate about hacking though, there's another problem: the pace of technological change. Take the guitar example: you invest a couple of years learning to play the guitar and perhaps develop a passion for it. That's something you can continue to nurture for a lifetime.

On the other hand, take the example from the article: the bored web developer spends "a few years" mastering Ruby on Rails. Oops, by then RoR is yesterday's news, now it's Clouds and Hadoop and Clojure and [insert technology/language/architecture du jour here]. So I think what you need to work on is not mastering something like "Ruby on Rails" but something at a higher level of abstraction... skills and habits that let you remain proficient and passionate about your craft even as the technological sands shift under you. I'm not sure how to really articulate what these are.

Re: Is Passion Serendipitously Discovered or Painstakingly Constructed?

#12

Post by jerf » Wed, Nov 25, 2009, 5:53 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #11

presidentender wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My response to your response: "no, it doesn't." You have to progress beyond the initial period of total incompetence, where nothing is fun. Your guitar strings buzz mutely, you keep dropping your hand and your opponent punches you in the face, and javac keeps yelling at you about "array index out of bounds." After that, though, the increasing success in the activity becomes a positive feedback loop, increasing your d…

With regards to being a passionate about hacking though, there's another problem: the pace of technological change. Take the guitar example: you invest a couple of years learning to play the guitar and perhaps develop a passion for it. That's something you can continue to nurture for a lifetime. On the other hand, take the example from the article: the bored web developer spends "a few years" mastering Ruby on Rails.…

Yes and no. There are underlying truths to programming that you can and should carry with you from environment to environment. Some are very difficult to put into words, but some are not. One example that is now considered trivial and well-known is "shun global variables"... but then, just today I was fighting with code that's hard to work with because it uses global variables. This stuff is always news to somebody....

Another more recent example that may pass into that peculiar state of "everybody agrees its common sense but by golly I sure see an awful lot of violations of it every week" is being suspicious of mutable state. I'm not quite 100% sold on the "never use mutable state" idea (getting closer every month, though...), but I sure am 100% sold on being suspicious of it. Doesn't matter what your environment is, that carries over. A lot of stuff does.

Re: Is Passion Serendipitously Discovered or Painstakingly Constructed?

#13

Post by angelbob » Wed, Nov 25, 2009, 8:28 PM UTC

presidentender wrote: post #8

angelbob wrote: post #2

You could rephrase the whole article, "Just do anything enough to get good at it. It doesn't matter what you want or like." My response: "yes, it really does."

My response to your response: "no, it doesn't." You have to progress beyond the initial period of total incompetence, where nothing is fun. Your guitar strings buzz mutely, you keep dropping your hand and your opponent punches you in the face, and javac keeps yelling at you about "array index out of bounds." After that, though, the increasing success in the activity becomes a positive feedback loop, increasing your d…

You truly believe that no matter what you try to get good at, it's equally good?

I agree that you need to get past the initial total incompetence, but redefining "passion" to mean "something you worked on for a long time" is ignoring or denying the idea that passion means enjoyment.

Re: Is Passion Serendipitously Discovered or Painstakingly Constructed?

#14

Post by sutro » Wed, Nov 25, 2009, 8:50 PM UTC

jeremyw wrote: post #9

Resonates nicely with something Cormac McCarthy said in a recent interview. Someone asked Flannery O'Connor why she wrote, and she said, "Because I was good at it." And I think that's the right answer. If you're good at something it's very hard not to do it.

I prefer this gem: "I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870457620457452...

Re: Is Passion Serendipitously Discovered or Painstakingly Constructed?

#15

Post by Psyonic » Wed, Nov 25, 2009, 9:25 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #12

ams6110 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With regards to being a passionate about hacking though, there's another problem: the pace of technological change. Take the guitar example: you invest a couple of years learning to play the guitar and perhaps develop a passion for it. That's something you can continue to nurture for a lifetime. On the other hand, take the example from the article: the bored web developer spends "a few years" mastering Ruby on Rails.…

Yes and no. There are underlying truths to programming that you can and should carry with you from environment to environment. Some are very difficult to put into words, but some are not. One example that is now considered trivial and well-known is "shun global variables"... but then, just today I was fighting with code that's hard to work with because it uses global variables. This stuff is always news to somebody..…

In a sense, global variables and mutable state are much the same. Even if the scope of the mutable variable is local, if it maintains state beyond any specific call, it has a global lifespan. I think using mutable variables within a function that don't live beyond the function is generally fine (for loops, etc).