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The other takeaway I like from Steve Martin is the idea that it's easy to be great some of the time but hard to be good reliably. You can have 'on' nights, but

The other takeaway I like from Steve Martin is the idea that it's easy to be great some of the time but hard to be good reliably. You can have 'on' nights, but it's handling your off nights that makes a professional. dang, now I need to figure out where I read this. edit: ah, found it. >It was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical. Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances. https://eebatou.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/5-creativity-tips-from-steve-martin/ https://eebatou.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/5-creativity-tips-f...

wallflower 15y ago
Related - my friends were discussing the difference between professional bowlers and the really good amateur bowlers. One of theme bowled averaging 160s/170s. An amateur bowler can bowl in the 200s on their home lane but a professional bowler can bowl on the road, in any condition - any oiling pattern. Yes, they have many bowling balls (for the conditions) but the professionals can perform in any situation. And, that is kind of the difference, between the rash of amateur coders and professional coders. Amateur coders (it is great that some of them have never code before) get a thrill from just writing something (the proverbial Hello, World or more) while professional coders can code in the context of a larger system and integrate that code. To code when the conditions aren't so great (e.g. deadlines, pressure, existing architecture).