7 ms·

Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

243 points by vinutheraj 17y ago

Willie_Dynamite 17y ago
While I hesitate to call myself gifted I can recognize some of that. I never really studied in high school, the only homework I ever did was hand ins. University came as a bit of a shock really, and taliking to friends, I know I'm not alone in this. I really wish they had done a bit more to prepare us for higher education, and I suspect dropout rates would go down if they did.
presidentender 17y ago
I'm so very lucky that a) I just happened to major in math and CS, not just CS and b) my 'giftedness' was only enough through calc 1 in the math program. My foreign language and gen eds were easy, and the CS program didn't expect much of us, but I had to actually try in the higher-level applied math classes. Without that, I'd have been in for a rude awakening when it came time to work for real, and it would have cost me much more than re-taking calc 2 did.
- __bjoernd 17y ago
  Similar for me. School was easy, I only learned to really work for something at the university.
- aoriste 17y ago
  As for me, I eschewed the applied topics (no ODE's no PDE's) in favor of the "pure" (algebra, analysis, topology, etc) only to discover that, because I had little interest in becoming a professor, most of it would only serve to keep my happily diverted on what are now ridiculously rare lazy Sunday afternoons. In these topics, so long as one is interested in the propositions in need of proof, real study is relatively useless. I first learned what it meant to study in the "real world" - in the lowly field of IT - when the fiat came down the line to transform format X into formats Y and Z, and ensure that changes to one translate to the others, keeping in mind that simultaneous changes may occur, in which case on the 'right' change should be kept. The old dictum is true: there is no substitute for experience.
asolove 17y ago
This is a very helpful post. How often do we run into people who are headstrong, and probably even right when we disagree with them, but who ultimately will benefit from a slightly more humble and careful way of working. Clean coding is as much about the social skill of communicating in code as about the raw ability to hold the problem in your own head.
stromhold 17y ago
Just the dose of practicality that my senior year at university needed. Makes me feel I can actually accomplish something with the right mix of communication, tools and team.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
zavulon 17y ago
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense... I never ever studied anything before sophomore year of college. And then when faced with serious large-scale programming problems, and 300 level math, I realized I don't know how to study. It was definitely a struggle, but I'm glad it happened to me early, and not when I entered a "real world".
- sjf 17y ago
  Depending on your career path, it is unlikely you would have ever encountered that math in the 'real world'.
  - presidentender 17y ago
    Doesn't matter. He'll run across a problem that doesn't just fall down and surrender in the face of his blinding intellect, and at that point, his studying and thinking skills (not the math trivia) will kick in and allow him to slay the beast.
    - aoriste 17y ago
      A trivial tangent: oddly enough I find that, whether I'm programming for distributed applications or animations, it is the number theory, and not (surprisingly) the linear algebra, that I am most grateful for having learned. Boutade's Law: do not underestimate the algorithmic utility of knowing your way around the integers.
      - zackattack 17y ago
        I would love to hear some of the number theory gems that have been most useful for you.
      - infinite8s 17y ago
        This is intriguing. Care to elaborate on a problem you've had and how number theory helped? I did the typical math courses required for a computer science degree (discrete math, linear algebra, diffeq, probability and statistics), but stopped short of the serious math courses (analysis). I've been meaning to start up with analysis (mainly for fun) but I'm intrigued to see how it might help in my day to day work.
RyanMcGreal 17y ago
ESR often comes across as unbearably pompous and self-important, but here he strikes a very constructive posture of hard-earned humility and even tough love.
- ajross 17y ago
  Or alternatively: this was 10 years ago, and the kernel is vastly more complicated now than it was then, running on hardware of a sophistication most of us scarcely imagined. And yet the kernel development model really hasn't changed much. It may be that ESR was especially humble and constructive in that post. But honestly, I'd argue he was also objectively wrong.
  - illumin8 17y ago
    How was ESR wrong? He seemed damn insightful to me. The curse of the gifted is a real thing. We've seen it many times before. Developers that can write 20 times the code of a "mere mortal" but don't think it's necessary to check it back in to version control. Or unit test, or run it through QA, or any of the other things that "mere mortals" need to do. Sure, you can get away with this when you're operating in "Founder only mode," and you're the sole contributor, but his point is valid. If you don't plan for the point in time when you have hundreds of developers working on several branches of forked code before you reach that point, by the time you do, your project is doomed.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - fnid2 17y ago
      I've been and to a large extent am one of those in some cases and I can't imagine not using version control, or code sharing, or modularity. I also backup my code in several locations across thousands of miles of earth and ocean. Look, "Founder only mode" is when the practices of these large corporations with lots of people depending on them are the most valuable, because everything depends on you. There aren't other people who can fill in and do your job. You have to be able to do it all. You can't skimp on any of the areas just because you're just you. Not if you expect anyone to depend on you, including yourself 6 months later when you have no idea what the code you wrote there does anymore. And you don't want to have to repeat yourself all over the place so you modularize. That's how it's done at the big shops too. It's good practice.
sjf 17y ago
Here is the post in the context of the original thread http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0240.html http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0240.h.... There doesn't seem to be a reply from Linus.
- jwecker 17y ago
  No, and I don't know if he split that driver, but I like to think that Linus took the message to heart (regardless of how he felt about it). The two+ years that followed saw the arrival of a lot of "meta" structure fixes, like bitkeeper (and then git of course), etc. that address many of ESR's concerns.
  - gfunk911 17y ago
    I love that Linus did what brilliant people do, which is modify the world to better fit how they want to work. I'm sure he modified his own practices somewhat, but he also modified the world by creating Git to enable his preferred workflow.
    - krakensden 17y ago
      You're forgetting history- BitKeeper, mostly. The way I heard it told, Larry McVoy sat down and showed it off to Linus, who finally said "ah yes, this is a tool and model that would improve my life." git didn't come along until Bitkeeper withdrew their support, after a prolonged series of arguments with kernel developers mad about a private company owning the code repository. I guess I'm saying you should give credit to Larry McVoy for showing the way.
- ximeng 17y ago
  More commentary and background at http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/kernel_in_pain.shtml http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/kernel_in_pain.s...
- sp332 17y ago
  Torvalds sort of addresses the issue, http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0241.html http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0241.h... "On the whole, people tend to _want_ to share, because it ends up being the easier "quick hack" in many cases. So I'm not worried about that part overmuch. I'm worried about people who share even when it doesn't make sense. And I'm worried about people having bad interfaces, which makes even sensible sharing end up as a experiment in horror. That's why I'm so un-interested in the "let's share" argument. I don't think that is where the problems are. "
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
the more gifted you are, the more you can get away with. but that doesn't mean you should be taking the easy path.
- jasonlotito 17y ago
  The problem is, society as a whole is concerned with the outcome less than the path taken their. If you are able to get an honest A, does it matter that you didn't have to study? If your client asks for X, Y, but not Z, then you give him X and Y, and get paid and move on. After all, you don't want to spend your life working. Life is about goals in so many ways that for many it's hard to avoid getting there as quickly and efficiently as possible.
tome 17y ago
I think it would be useful if you put the year [2000] in brackets after the title. For some reason I read the e-mail thinking it was contemporary!
rbarooah 17y ago
I think it's worth saying that it's not just that gifted people don't need to learn study skills to get through school. They can be actively prevented from learning them by being forced to focus on a curriculum for which they don't need them. Denying gifted people the opportunity to take on real challenges while they are still at school when their mistakes are not too critical, which happens all too often, is worse than not recognizing their gifts, it is actively denying them the opportunity that others are given.
lotharbot 17y ago
Edit the title to include the year (2000) ? ----- The overall point is solid. Many times, the "gifted" have sufficient brain capacity to be able to track or process fairly complex problems. As such, they see no need for the sort of support structures and habits others use to solve the same problems. Therefore, they don't develop those things in the "natural" way, piece by piece. Instead, they finally run up against a problem too big for their brain, and have to develop those habits all of a sudden. For some people, that's an obstacle they never overcome. For others, once they realize the problem, they're quick to get advice, research solutions, and develop those structures. I hope this letter served its purpose by giving Linus the motivation and information he needed to overcome the curse of the gifted.
- ominous_prime 17y ago
  Isn't hindsight grand. I never had to study, take notes (or write anything down for that matter), or do homework to get through highschool. College wasn't too difficult, but it was too much of the same, and I couldn't keep with the grind. > "For some people, that's an obstacle they never overcome." It's amazingly difficult to create these habits. I often struggle with large projects, where it's impossible to keep it all in my head. The urge to take notes happens too late, or I don't know what to take or how to take it. A recent project where I'm learning a new codebase and language simultaneously is forcing me to reevaluate how I work. It's almost more than I can mentally handle at once, and even still, I'm brute-forcing it by internalizing everything. I'm taking notes here and there when I think of it, trying different methods; wikis, textfiles, carrying a notepad; but it's slow going. Parents, teachers, mentors - do your best to make sure your kids are challenged. Praise them for succeeding, but don't let them ride that success through life, because it does end.
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    "Praise them for succeeding" Praise them equally for failing, if they worked hard, learned something, and are willing to keep trying.
    - ominous_prime 17y ago
andrewpbrett 17y ago
"Your tendency to undervalue modularization and code-sharing is one symptom [of the curse]. Another is your refusal to use systematic version-control or release-engineering practices. To you, these things seem mostly like overhead and a way of needlessly complicating your life." I'd say he came around on version control with git - five+ years later.
- nas 17y ago
  At the time I think CVS was the proposed system. Linus said he preferred patches. I'm not sure he was wrong. AFAIK, bitkeeper was designed (not sure to what extent) when Larry got together with Linus and Linus explained how he wanted it to work.
  - ob 17y ago
    I've heard it told the other way around. That Larry had worked on Teamware at Sun and he showed Linus how distributed SCM worked. Linus said "if you build that, I will use it" and Larry built it.
pavelludiq 17y ago
Anybody have good advice for a first year university student who slept through most of high-school, got good grades, and then failed his first calculus exam because he was reading "Practical common lisp", instead of studying? How do i learn to study if i find the subject boring? How do i get disciplined? I know a lot of you have been here, how did you handle it?
- aaronbrethorst 17y ago
  No, I do not have any good advice to give you. I had the same problem, and never figured out the answer. Instead, I was able to squeak by with C-minuses in all of the subjects I found horrendously dull, and make it up with A's in my senior and grad level computer science and psychology courses. I graduated a month after I turned 21; I think my final GPA was 3.02/4.00. Microsoft hired me a few months later to work on Visual Studio. They never asked about my GPA. In fact, my first manager was a college dropout. I hope you figure it out because I absolutely do not recommend this path, but it is workable.
- Estragon 17y ago
  In my case, it was the reverse. Loved Mathematics, shunned everything else. They had something called a "Distinguished Scholar's Program," which meant I was basically able to design my own curriculum. By the end of the first year, when I'd figured out just how much latitude that afforded me, I was taking only Math classes. Now, I think that left me with a somewhat unbalanced view of the world, and I paid for it later. But if you go and talk to your professors about how much flexibility there is in the degree requirements, you might be pleasantly surprised. You'll be sorry if you don't learn calculus, though!
- zoba 17y ago
  Tell yourself you're going to do it, trick yourself into thinking you're going to do it, and then actually do it. I get the most work done when I feel like I "fit the bill" for what someone who is about to get a lot of work done is like. Sort of like "Well, gee... I've got a clean room, and a clean desk, and I got a good night sleep, no distractions, had some caffeine, wont be hungry for a while... There is no way I'm not going to get some work done!" Then I just do it. I find that starting work is a lot harder than sticking with it, as well. Once I get in to some problem or homework then I find its pretty easy to keep going. So, this thought is good to keep in mind when I'm having trouble starting because I know if I start I wont feel so bad. I think the most important part is tricking yourself into thinking you're going to do it. For me, it was having a desk and clean enough room that I felt "studious"...but it was also reading books about how to get work done. The advice in the books didn't work for the most part, in my opinion, but because I felt like I was really headed towards "being able to buckle down and get stuff done" and had examples in mind of how I was headed there, I tricked myself into doing it. Then once I actually started doing it, it because easier because I could say "well, I've done it before!" One last tip: I like reading biographies of impressive, academically accomplished people. Being inspired by other people helps me stick to things I find boring because I want to be like them, and having a good GPA certainly isn't going to hurt anything in my goal of achieving greatness! Ok, seriously one last tip: listen to music without words. Words distract my thoughts, but I really need to have some music on to keep me from being distracted by all the noises outside my room.
Aegean 17y ago
I didn't get what this sharing code was about until I read the earlier post: http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0201.html http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0201.h... I think this is a typical engineering argument and its got nothing to do with curse of gifted etc. If you share code and they divert later on, even if to a small degree, it gets harder and harder to maintain them. That's what linus says, and I do think that is simpler. Linus (and a good engineer) always favors the simpler solution. The more gifted, the more simpler. So ESR is just arguing the other way around. I see this all the time in hot lkml discussions. It's often the more gifted who sees through to the simpler solution, but others can't. Don't know if it is true for all gifted, but definitely for the best software engineers.
btilly 17y ago
Dang. I should have submitted http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1167649 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1167649 rather than just including the link in a reply that got ignored.
patchwork 17y ago
You guys are all talking about the burden and challenge of being gifted, but really, being gifted is awesome. I would much rather be gifted than not be. And if you are truly gifted, and not just talented with a tendency for the grandiose, you can rise above this challenge too, and become wise as well as gifted (after the necessary trials that any worthy endeavor entail, of course). It can happen, despite the happy mythos espoused here by our dear friend ESR. I am skeptical of cursing any specific group of people, unless the point is that every person or "type of person" has a curse that must be borne. If so, being gifted is hardly one of the worst. "Oh noes, I must deal with my constant state of amazingness! How will I cope!" Others must deal with you though I suppose. That must be rough for them.
- lucifer 17y ago
  > you can rise above this challenge too, and become wise as well as gifted That's the essence of what ESR was saying.
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deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

243 points by vinutheraj 17y ago

While I hesitate to call myself gifted I can recognize some of that. I never really studied in high school, the only homework I ever did was hand ins. University came as a bit of a shock really, and taliking to friends, I know I'm not alone in this. I really wish they had done a bit more to prepare us for higher education, and I suspect dropout rates would go down if they did.

presidentender 17y ago

I'm so very lucky that a) I just happened to major in math and CS, not just CS and b) my 'giftedness' was only enough through calc 1 in the math program. My foreign language and gen eds were easy, and the CS program didn't expect much of us, but I had to actually try in the higher-level applied math classes. Without that, I'd have been in for a rude awakening when it came time to work for real, and it would have cost me much more than re-taking calc 2 did.

__bjoernd 17y ago
Similar for me. School was easy, I only learned to really work for something at the university.
aoriste 17y ago
As for me, I eschewed the applied topics (no ODE's no PDE's) in favor of the "pure" (algebra, analysis, topology, etc) only to discover that, because I had little interest in becoming a professor, most of it would only serve to keep my happily diverted on what are now ridiculously rare lazy Sunday afternoons. In these topics, so long as one is interested in the propositions in need of proof, real study is relatively useless. I first learned what it meant to study in the "real world" - in the lowly field of IT - when the fiat came down the line to transform format X into formats Y and Z, and ensure that changes to one translate to the others, keeping in mind that simultaneous changes may occur, in which case on the 'right' change should be kept. The old dictum is true: there is no substitute for experience.

asolove 17y ago

This is a very helpful post. How often do we run into people who are headstrong, and probably even right when we disagree with them, but who ultimately will benefit from a slightly more humble and careful way of working. Clean coding is as much about the social skill of communicating in code as about the raw ability to hold the problem in your own head.

stromhold 17y ago

Just the dose of practicality that my senior year at university needed. Makes me feel I can actually accomplish something with the right mix of communication, tools and team.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

zavulon 17y ago

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense... I never ever studied anything before sophomore year of college. And then when faced with serious large-scale programming problems, and 300 level math, I realized I don't know how to study. It was definitely a struggle, but I'm glad it happened to me early, and not when I entered a "real world".

sjf 17y ago
Depending on your career path, it is unlikely you would have ever encountered that math in the 'real world'.
- presidentender 17y ago
  Doesn't matter. He'll run across a problem that doesn't just fall down and surrender in the face of his blinding intellect, and at that point, his studying and thinking skills (not the math trivia) will kick in and allow him to slay the beast.
  - aoriste 17y ago
    A trivial tangent: oddly enough I find that, whether I'm programming for distributed applications or animations, it is the number theory, and not (surprisingly) the linear algebra, that I am most grateful for having learned. Boutade's Law: do not underestimate the algorithmic utility of knowing your way around the integers.
    - zackattack 17y ago
      I would love to hear some of the number theory gems that have been most useful for you.
    - infinite8s 17y ago
      This is intriguing. Care to elaborate on a problem you've had and how number theory helped? I did the typical math courses required for a computer science degree (discrete math, linear algebra, diffeq, probability and statistics), but stopped short of the serious math courses (analysis). I've been meaning to start up with analysis (mainly for fun) but I'm intrigued to see how it might help in my day to day work.

RyanMcGreal 17y ago

ESR often comes across as unbearably pompous and self-important, but here he strikes a very constructive posture of hard-earned humility and even tough love.

ajross 17y ago
Or alternatively: this was 10 years ago, and the kernel is vastly more complicated now than it was then, running on hardware of a sophistication most of us scarcely imagined. And yet the kernel development model really hasn't changed much. It may be that ESR was especially humble and constructive in that post. But honestly, I'd argue he was also objectively wrong.
- illumin8 17y ago
  How was ESR wrong? He seemed damn insightful to me. The curse of the gifted is a real thing. We've seen it many times before. Developers that can write 20 times the code of a "mere mortal" but don't think it's necessary to check it back in to version control. Or unit test, or run it through QA, or any of the other things that "mere mortals" need to do. Sure, you can get away with this when you're operating in "Founder only mode," and you're the sole contributor, but his point is valid. If you don't plan for the point in time when you have hundreds of developers working on several branches of forked code before you reach that point, by the time you do, your project is doomed.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - fnid2 17y ago
    I've been and to a large extent am one of those in some cases and I can't imagine not using version control, or code sharing, or modularity. I also backup my code in several locations across thousands of miles of earth and ocean. Look, "Founder only mode" is when the practices of these large corporations with lots of people depending on them are the most valuable, because everything depends on you. There aren't other people who can fill in and do your job. You have to be able to do it all. You can't skimp on any of the areas just because you're just you. Not if you expect anyone to depend on you, including yourself 6 months later when you have no idea what the code you wrote there does anymore. And you don't want to have to repeat yourself all over the place so you modularize. That's how it's done at the big shops too. It's good practice.

sjf 17y ago

Here is the post in the context of the original thread http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0240.html http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0240.h.... There doesn't seem to be a reply from Linus.

jwecker 17y ago
No, and I don't know if he split that driver, but I like to think that Linus took the message to heart (regardless of how he felt about it). The two+ years that followed saw the arrival of a lot of "meta" structure fixes, like bitkeeper (and then git of course), etc. that address many of ESR's concerns.
- gfunk911 17y ago
  I love that Linus did what brilliant people do, which is modify the world to better fit how they want to work. I'm sure he modified his own practices somewhat, but he also modified the world by creating Git to enable his preferred workflow.
  - krakensden 17y ago
    You're forgetting history- BitKeeper, mostly. The way I heard it told, Larry McVoy sat down and showed it off to Linus, who finally said "ah yes, this is a tool and model that would improve my life." git didn't come along until Bitkeeper withdrew their support, after a prolonged series of arguments with kernel developers mad about a private company owning the code repository. I guess I'm saying you should give credit to Larry McVoy for showing the way.
ximeng 17y ago
More commentary and background at http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/kernel_in_pain.shtml http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/kernel_in_pain.s...
sp332 17y ago
Torvalds sort of addresses the issue, http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0241.html http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0241.h... "On the whole, people tend to _want_ to share, because it ends up being the easier "quick hack" in many cases. So I'm not worried about that part overmuch. I'm worried about people who share even when it doesn't make sense. And I'm worried about people having bad interfaces, which makes even sensible sharing end up as a experiment in horror. That's why I'm so un-interested in the "let's share" argument. I don't think that is where the problems are. "

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

the more gifted you are, the more you can get away with. but that doesn't mean you should be taking the easy path.

jasonlotito 17y ago
The problem is, society as a whole is concerned with the outcome less than the path taken their. If you are able to get an honest A, does it matter that you didn't have to study? If your client asks for X, Y, but not Z, then you give him X and Y, and get paid and move on. After all, you don't want to spend your life working. Life is about goals in so many ways that for many it's hard to avoid getting there as quickly and efficiently as possible.

tome 17y ago

I think it would be useful if you put the year [2000] in brackets after the title. For some reason I read the e-mail thinking it was contemporary!

rbarooah 17y ago

I think it's worth saying that it's not just that gifted people don't need to learn study skills to get through school. They can be actively prevented from learning them by being forced to focus on a curriculum for which they don't need them. Denying gifted people the opportunity to take on real challenges while they are still at school when their mistakes are not too critical, which happens all too often, is worse than not recognizing their gifts, it is actively denying them the opportunity that others are given.

lotharbot 17y ago

Edit the title to include the year (2000) ? ----- The overall point is solid. Many times, the "gifted" have sufficient brain capacity to be able to track or process fairly complex problems. As such, they see no need for the sort of support structures and habits others use to solve the same problems. Therefore, they don't develop those things in the "natural" way, piece by piece. Instead, they finally run up against a problem too big for their brain, and have to develop those habits all of a sudden. For some people, that's an obstacle they never overcome. For others, once they realize the problem, they're quick to get advice, research solutions, and develop those structures. I hope this letter served its purpose by giving Linus the motivation and information he needed to overcome the curse of the gifted.

ominous_prime 17y ago
Isn't hindsight grand. I never had to study, take notes (or write anything down for that matter), or do homework to get through highschool. College wasn't too difficult, but it was too much of the same, and I couldn't keep with the grind. > "For some people, that's an obstacle they never overcome." It's amazingly difficult to create these habits. I often struggle with large projects, where it's impossible to keep it all in my head. The urge to take notes happens too late, or I don't know what to take or how to take it. A recent project where I'm learning a new codebase and language simultaneously is forcing me to reevaluate how I work. It's almost more than I can mentally handle at once, and even still, I'm brute-forcing it by internalizing everything. I'm taking notes here and there when I think of it, trying different methods; wikis, textfiles, carrying a notepad; but it's slow going. Parents, teachers, mentors - do your best to make sure your kids are challenged. Praise them for succeeding, but don't let them ride that success through life, because it does end.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  "Praise them for succeeding" Praise them equally for failing, if they worked hard, learned something, and are willing to keep trying.
  - ominous_prime 17y ago

andrewpbrett 17y ago

"Your tendency to undervalue modularization and code-sharing is one symptom [of the curse]. Another is your refusal to use systematic version-control or release-engineering practices. To you, these things seem mostly like overhead and a way of needlessly complicating your life." I'd say he came around on version control with git - five+ years later.

nas 17y ago
At the time I think CVS was the proposed system. Linus said he preferred patches. I'm not sure he was wrong. AFAIK, bitkeeper was designed (not sure to what extent) when Larry got together with Linus and Linus explained how he wanted it to work.
- ob 17y ago
  I've heard it told the other way around. That Larry had worked on Teamware at Sun and he showed Linus how distributed SCM worked. Linus said "if you build that, I will use it" and Larry built it.

pavelludiq 17y ago

Anybody have good advice for a first year university student who slept through most of high-school, got good grades, and then failed his first calculus exam because he was reading "Practical common lisp", instead of studying? How do i learn to study if i find the subject boring? How do i get disciplined? I know a lot of you have been here, how did you handle it?

aaronbrethorst 17y ago
No, I do not have any good advice to give you. I had the same problem, and never figured out the answer. Instead, I was able to squeak by with C-minuses in all of the subjects I found horrendously dull, and make it up with A's in my senior and grad level computer science and psychology courses. I graduated a month after I turned 21; I think my final GPA was 3.02/4.00. Microsoft hired me a few months later to work on Visual Studio. They never asked about my GPA. In fact, my first manager was a college dropout. I hope you figure it out because I absolutely do not recommend this path, but it is workable.
Estragon 17y ago
In my case, it was the reverse. Loved Mathematics, shunned everything else. They had something called a "Distinguished Scholar's Program," which meant I was basically able to design my own curriculum. By the end of the first year, when I'd figured out just how much latitude that afforded me, I was taking only Math classes. Now, I think that left me with a somewhat unbalanced view of the world, and I paid for it later. But if you go and talk to your professors about how much flexibility there is in the degree requirements, you might be pleasantly surprised. You'll be sorry if you don't learn calculus, though!
zoba 17y ago
Tell yourself you're going to do it, trick yourself into thinking you're going to do it, and then actually do it. I get the most work done when I feel like I "fit the bill" for what someone who is about to get a lot of work done is like. Sort of like "Well, gee... I've got a clean room, and a clean desk, and I got a good night sleep, no distractions, had some caffeine, wont be hungry for a while... There is no way I'm not going to get some work done!" Then I just do it. I find that starting work is a lot harder than sticking with it, as well. Once I get in to some problem or homework then I find its pretty easy to keep going. So, this thought is good to keep in mind when I'm having trouble starting because I know if I start I wont feel so bad. I think the most important part is tricking yourself into thinking you're going to do it. For me, it was having a desk and clean enough room that I felt "studious"...but it was also reading books about how to get work done. The advice in the books didn't work for the most part, in my opinion, but because I felt like I was really headed towards "being able to buckle down and get stuff done" and had examples in mind of how I was headed there, I tricked myself into doing it. Then once I actually started doing it, it because easier because I could say "well, I've done it before!" One last tip: I like reading biographies of impressive, academically accomplished people. Being inspired by other people helps me stick to things I find boring because I want to be like them, and having a good GPA certainly isn't going to hurt anything in my goal of achieving greatness! Ok, seriously one last tip: listen to music without words. Words distract my thoughts, but I really need to have some music on to keep me from being distracted by all the noises outside my room.

Aegean 17y ago

I didn't get what this sharing code was about until I read the earlier post: http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0201.html http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0201.h... I think this is a typical engineering argument and its got nothing to do with curse of gifted etc. If you share code and they divert later on, even if to a small degree, it gets harder and harder to maintain them. That's what linus says, and I do think that is simpler. Linus (and a good engineer) always favors the simpler solution. The more gifted, the more simpler. So ESR is just arguing the other way around. I see this all the time in hot lkml discussions. It's often the more gifted who sees through to the simpler solution, but others can't. Don't know if it is true for all gifted, but definitely for the best software engineers.

btilly 17y ago

Dang. I should have submitted http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1167649 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1167649 rather than just including the link in a reply that got ignored.

patchwork 17y ago

You guys are all talking about the burden and challenge of being gifted, but really, being gifted is awesome. I would much rather be gifted than not be. And if you are truly gifted, and not just talented with a tendency for the grandiose, you can rise above this challenge too, and become wise as well as gifted (after the necessary trials that any worthy endeavor entail, of course). It can happen, despite the happy mythos espoused here by our dear friend ESR. I am skeptical of cursing any specific group of people, unless the point is that every person or "type of person" has a curse that must be borne. If so, being gifted is hardly one of the worst. "Oh noes, I must deal with my constant state of amazingness! How will I cope!" Others must deal with you though I suppose. That must be rough for them.

lucifer 17y ago
> you can rise above this challenge too, and become wise as well as gifted That's the essence of what ESR was saying.

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