Just to take the musician example: >far more important to being a successful musician are three components I agree that these are necessary traits to be a suc

Just to take the musician example: >far more important to being a successful musician are three components I agree that these are necessary traits to be a successful musician, but they are not sufficient. There are (apparently) many "tiger moms" out there pushing their children with the same amount of relentlessness to excel with a musical instrument. Yet only a handful of them play at Carnagie Hall at 10. I find it hard to believe that those that achieve that level of proficiency were simply "pushed harder" by their parents. This is a poor explanation for the outcome. A better explanation is that the intersection of tiger mom's and genetic aptitude for music is extremely rare. >then he shouldn't feel sorry for wasting his programming "talent", as there's no such thing Again, I don't think the evidence bares this out. Taking myself as an example: I've always taken to math extremely easily. I always "got" it with little effort. This even through periods where I cared none about schoolwork and thus didn't do any of it (my report cards reflected this). It was the same with programming. I took my first class in high school and it came extremely easy to me and I've excelled at it ever since. I find it very hard to believe that talent isn't a huge factor in these things.