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I'm still reading the article, but I stopped halfway to point this out: Remember the ‘10,000 Hours’ Rule for Success? Forget About It They should not have sai

by hliyan 7y ago

I'm still reading the article, but I stopped halfway to point this out: Remember the ‘10,000 Hours’ Rule for Success? Forget About It They should not have said that. I don't know whether 10K is the actual number, but I got good at two things that I was never naturally good at, simply through years of brute force repetition: coding and writing. I was never a born hacker -- I struggled with Visual Basic when I was 21. But 15 years and maybe 300,000 lines of code later, I have an extremely high degree of proficiency in both C++ and JavaScript, with a good level of proficiency in Java, Python and Golang. I was extremely bad at writing. So much so my fingers used to sweat when I came to the essay section of any test. But after about a decade of keeping a personal journal, I would like to think I write rather well. Anecdotal yes, but speaking personally, I would not discount the 10,000 hours concept.

icebraining 7y ago
Unlike what this review seems to imply, the author of the book doesn't actually discount that concept - he says it's true for a certain kind of activity, one with reliable feedback, such as programming. Quote from the interview I linked: "The way that chess works makes it what's called a kind learning environment. So, these are terms used by psychologist Robin Hogarth. And what a kind learning environment is, is one where patterns recur; ideally a situation is constrained--so, a chessboard with very rigid rules and a literal board is very constrained; and, importantly, every time you do something you get feedback that is totally obvious--all the information is available, the feedback is quick, and it is 100% accurate. Right? And this is chess. And this is golf. You do something: all the information is available; you see the consequences. The consequences are completely immediate and accurate. And you adjust accordingly. And in these kinds of kind learning environments, if you are cognitively engaged you get better just by doing the activity. On the opposite end of the spectrum are wicked learning environments. And this is a spectrum, from kind to wicked. Wicked learning environments: often some information is hidden. Even when it isn't, feedback may be delayed. It may be infrequent. It may be nonexistent. And it maybe be partly accurate, or inaccurate in many of the cases. So, the most wicked learning environments will reinforce the wrong types of behavior."
- piker 7y ago
  Interesting paradigm. It's like wicked learning environments are the SLAM of life.
- Jtsummers 7y ago
  That is actually discussed in this review (kind versus wicked learning environments). It just isn't at the top of the article because it's not as catchy.
  - dlivingston 7y ago
    Would you count coding as a kind or a wicked environment? To me, it seems wicked - standards change, you switch languages, frameworks come and go. On the same token, it could be 'kind' if you isolate yourself to one or two robust languages (i.e. your career is built on C++).
    - coreymatyas 7y ago
      Coding is kind. The dichotomy is based on feedback availability, quality, and delay. While the environment does change over time, it continues to be kind: 99% of the time, you're able to hit compile and see instantaneous, accurate feedback. Doesn't matter which language, framework, or standard you're using (except maybe Malbolge). Even debugging is kind save perhaps for heisenbugs, but that's a bit of a stretch to declare the whole field a wicked environment.
    - NateEag 7y ago
      Coding is the kindest learning environment mankind has ever known. Constructing valid experiments in software development is incredibly easy. Add an assert, recompile, and see if it gets triggered. We programmers consider it unacceptably painful if testing a hypothesis takes ten minutes. Real life is never that clean or easy.
      - gubbrora 7y ago
        Will it compile takes 10 minutes. Is this good long term design or am I building a castle on quicksand takes much longer.
BuckRogers 7y ago
The original author is saying success, not proficiency. There's plenty of programmers who didn't end up like John Carmack. Defining success is pretty difficult. I generally agree with everything you're saying though, and it's hard to say any good programmer won't be nominally successful in their own right. Any skill-based career will enable someone to be employable, which in 2019 is more successful than average.
- dev_dull 7y ago
  The counter argument is that trade-crafts (of which I include programming) are one of the clearest examples of different people have vastly difference proficiencies in the lower tiers of skill outside mastery.
dev_dull 7y ago
The 10k rule is falling out of social favor nowadays, as are most systems of thinking that suggest success requires hard work and (most importantly) persistence.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  I have always liked the saying that "the only place success comes before work is in a dictionary". It's clearly not entirely accurate, because of course you can gain advantages through something like inheritance that look a lot like being successful, but there is a lot of truth in it if you look beyond factors that really are dumb luck.
- 1123581321 7y ago
  The outcome of a high quantity of deliberate practice isn’t an opinion. It may be true that it’s more popular to deride top performers and perhaps try not to hire them, but we can’t help but value the contributions that people with deep expertise make to the economy, the arts, infrastructure, and so on.
- rifung 7y ago
  Is it? My impression is that nowadays people accept hard work and persistence are still necessary but no longer sufficient.
- pdimitar 7y ago
  "If hard work pays off, show me a rich donkey." Persistence will make you a master in a skill -- and you can do it almost subconsciously afterwards. It doesn't give you a broader culture and overview of the world though. Or at least, it rarely does.
  - dev_dull 7y ago
    > ”If hard work pays off, show me a rich donkey." What a weird analogy, as if spending all night pointlessly digging hole in your background correlates with wealth. Though I think if you did have the grit to do that you will find success in many endeavors. It takes hard work to go from nothing to something. People doing the hard work are not confused about what’s meaningful.
majos 7y ago
Curious, how do you think a decade of journaling has made you a better writer? Most writing advice heavily features feedback, from peers, instructors, friends, editors, and so on. But journaling almost by definition prevents that. And it's not like hoisting jumpers in basketball -- you don't really know if you "made the shot" in writing, no? In the article's language, writing seems like a very wicked environment.
- hliyan 7y ago
  I don't know how to explain it, only that it worked. If I had to guess, I got feedback from my future self. I would often read my old journal entries, and notice errors and improvements that I would not have noticed at the time. That, I suppose, is how I know I've improved. I also read a lot, so each year I learn more about what good writing looks like and therefore have a progressively improving basis of comparison for my journal entries. Edit: I'm not a native speaker of English.
- RussianCow 7y ago
  Not the OP, but one of the hardest parts of writing (at least initially) is simply knowing how to take the thoughts in your head and put them into words. This is a skill that just takes practice, and improvements to it are fairly obvious even without external feedback—you become much faster and your writing starts to sound better and flow more smoothly. Source: Someone who struggled with writing and became better with practice. :) Edit: I just want to point out that getting better at "writing" in the broadest sense is very different than getting better at specific kinds of writing, like academic or journalistic, where particular patterns are important and much more difficult to self-teach.
  - pdimitar 7y ago
    All you say is 100% true, at least in my own experience as well. But none of that means you will be able to reach a certain audience. Although I have to say, I care very little about that. Good technical writing which is appreciated by my colleagues -- and being eloquent and expressive in casual conversations -- is good enough for me.
- 7y ago
ramadis 7y ago
The 10k hours rule is actually a misunderstanding from a paper on violin practice by Anders Ericsson. An error that the author himself explains in his book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. It doesn't mean that you can't learn something to mastery in 10k hours or less. It just means that 10k hours is kind of an invented number. Some skills require more time, some less, but all of them require purposeful practice.
ArcMex 7y ago
Thanks for sharing. Everything I ever struggled with programming wise, I got better at simply by putting in the hours.

by hliyan 7y ago

icebraining 7y ago

Unlike what this review seems to imply, the author of the book doesn't actually discount that concept - he says it's true for a certain kind of activity, one with reliable feedback, such as programming. Quote from the interview I linked: "The way that chess works makes it what's called a kind learning environment. So, these are terms used by psychologist Robin Hogarth. And what a kind learning environment is, is one where patterns recur; ideally a situation is constrained--so, a chessboard with very rigid rules and a literal board is very constrained; and, importantly, every time you do something you get feedback that is totally obvious--all the information is available, the feedback is quick, and it is 100% accurate. Right? And this is chess. And this is golf. You do something: all the information is available; you see the consequences. The consequences are completely immediate and accurate. And you adjust accordingly. And in these kinds of kind learning environments, if you are cognitively engaged you get better just by doing the activity. On the opposite end of the spectrum are wicked learning environments. And this is a spectrum, from kind to wicked. Wicked learning environments: often some information is hidden. Even when it isn't, feedback may be delayed. It may be infrequent. It may be nonexistent. And it maybe be partly accurate, or inaccurate in many of the cases. So, the most wicked learning environments will reinforce the wrong types of behavior."

piker 7y ago
Interesting paradigm. It's like wicked learning environments are the SLAM of life.
Jtsummers 7y ago
That is actually discussed in this review (kind versus wicked learning environments). It just isn't at the top of the article because it's not as catchy.
- dlivingston 7y ago
  Would you count coding as a kind or a wicked environment? To me, it seems wicked - standards change, you switch languages, frameworks come and go. On the same token, it could be 'kind' if you isolate yourself to one or two robust languages (i.e. your career is built on C++).
  - coreymatyas 7y ago
    Coding is kind. The dichotomy is based on feedback availability, quality, and delay. While the environment does change over time, it continues to be kind: 99% of the time, you're able to hit compile and see instantaneous, accurate feedback. Doesn't matter which language, framework, or standard you're using (except maybe Malbolge). Even debugging is kind save perhaps for heisenbugs, but that's a bit of a stretch to declare the whole field a wicked environment.
  - NateEag 7y ago
    Coding is the kindest learning environment mankind has ever known. Constructing valid experiments in software development is incredibly easy. Add an assert, recompile, and see if it gets triggered. We programmers consider it unacceptably painful if testing a hypothesis takes ten minutes. Real life is never that clean or easy.
    - gubbrora 7y ago
      Will it compile takes 10 minutes. Is this good long term design or am I building a castle on quicksand takes much longer.

BuckRogers 7y ago

The original author is saying success, not proficiency. There's plenty of programmers who didn't end up like John Carmack. Defining success is pretty difficult. I generally agree with everything you're saying though, and it's hard to say any good programmer won't be nominally successful in their own right. Any skill-based career will enable someone to be employable, which in 2019 is more successful than average.

dev_dull 7y ago
The counter argument is that trade-crafts (of which I include programming) are one of the clearest examples of different people have vastly difference proficiencies in the lower tiers of skill outside mastery.

dev_dull 7y ago

The 10k rule is falling out of social favor nowadays, as are most systems of thinking that suggest success requires hard work and (most importantly) persistence.

Silhouette 7y ago
I have always liked the saying that "the only place success comes before work is in a dictionary". It's clearly not entirely accurate, because of course you can gain advantages through something like inheritance that look a lot like being successful, but there is a lot of truth in it if you look beyond factors that really are dumb luck.
1123581321 7y ago
The outcome of a high quantity of deliberate practice isn’t an opinion. It may be true that it’s more popular to deride top performers and perhaps try not to hire them, but we can’t help but value the contributions that people with deep expertise make to the economy, the arts, infrastructure, and so on.
rifung 7y ago
Is it? My impression is that nowadays people accept hard work and persistence are still necessary but no longer sufficient.
pdimitar 7y ago
"If hard work pays off, show me a rich donkey." Persistence will make you a master in a skill -- and you can do it almost subconsciously afterwards. It doesn't give you a broader culture and overview of the world though. Or at least, it rarely does.
- dev_dull 7y ago
  > ”If hard work pays off, show me a rich donkey." What a weird analogy, as if spending all night pointlessly digging hole in your background correlates with wealth. Though I think if you did have the grit to do that you will find success in many endeavors. It takes hard work to go from nothing to something. People doing the hard work are not confused about what’s meaningful.

majos 7y ago

Curious, how do you think a decade of journaling has made you a better writer? Most writing advice heavily features feedback, from peers, instructors, friends, editors, and so on. But journaling almost by definition prevents that. And it's not like hoisting jumpers in basketball -- you don't really know if you "made the shot" in writing, no? In the article's language, writing seems like a very wicked environment.

hliyan 7y ago
I don't know how to explain it, only that it worked. If I had to guess, I got feedback from my future self. I would often read my old journal entries, and notice errors and improvements that I would not have noticed at the time. That, I suppose, is how I know I've improved. I also read a lot, so each year I learn more about what good writing looks like and therefore have a progressively improving basis of comparison for my journal entries. Edit: I'm not a native speaker of English.
RussianCow 7y ago
Not the OP, but one of the hardest parts of writing (at least initially) is simply knowing how to take the thoughts in your head and put them into words. This is a skill that just takes practice, and improvements to it are fairly obvious even without external feedback—you become much faster and your writing starts to sound better and flow more smoothly. Source: Someone who struggled with writing and became better with practice. :) Edit: I just want to point out that getting better at "writing" in the broadest sense is very different than getting better at specific kinds of writing, like academic or journalistic, where particular patterns are important and much more difficult to self-teach.
- pdimitar 7y ago
  All you say is 100% true, at least in my own experience as well. But none of that means you will be able to reach a certain audience. Although I have to say, I care very little about that. Good technical writing which is appreciated by my colleagues -- and being eloquent and expressive in casual conversations -- is good enough for me.
7y ago

ramadis 7y ago

The 10k hours rule is actually a misunderstanding from a paper on violin practice by Anders Ericsson. An error that the author himself explains in his book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. It doesn't mean that you can't learn something to mastery in 10k hours or less. It just means that 10k hours is kind of an invented number. Some skills require more time, some less, but all of them require purposeful practice.

ArcMex 7y ago

Thanks for sharing. Everything I ever struggled with programming wise, I got better at simply by putting in the hours.