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When asked, greater writers and programmers will both emphasize study and practice. They recognize they were once bad writers and programmers and got better via

When asked, greater writers and programmers will both emphasize study and practice. They recognize they were once bad writers and programmers and got better via study and practice. I see no reason to doubt these self-reports. I think Richard Hamming is out of his depth here, as evidenced by his use of naive anecdotes and analogies. If programming is like writing, it is like a severely restricted writing exercise, where you can only use certain grammatical structures, where you have to define a lot of words explicitly and where your stories have to explain to a machine how to achieve a slew of mundane goals.

pyalot2 14y ago
It's a fact that you cannot become better at something without doing it. But it is not guaranteed that you become better at something because you're doing it. The personality traits that let you become a great writer or programmer are not innate in everybody. And for the most part you can't reshape a personality to have the right traits. It's not talent, but the right precondition to make use of the practice.
- Confusion 14y ago
  It is practically guaranteed that you will become better if you 'study and practice', which implies the explicit goal of becoming better. It's almost impossible to become worse by practicing with the explicit goal of becoming better. I don't have any reason to believe there exists such a thing as an identifiable "personality trait that let's you become a great writer or programmer". Perhaps a predisposition towards "being good at what you do" and "practicing and studying to become better" is such a thing, but when I speak for myself I know such tendencies can thoroughly change over time. I believe it's easy to engage in armchair psychology, while simultaneously thinking ourselves members of a special breed.
  - pyalot2 14y ago
    Becoming better isn't the same as becoming great. I don't think there is such a thing as an identifiable personality trait, not in the way you mean it. Yet I'll propose to you a simple proof of two points. The first point is that there is more going on than simply applying yourself. And the second point is that whatever that is, it has to do with your personality. To the first point: If there was a recipe to greatness (the Amadeus, Shakespeare, Einstein, Goedel, Knuth kind) then everybody would simply do it and we'd be a race of supermen. So obviously any argument for the existence of such a recipe has to be fundamentally flawed. This presents us with a paradox, as we do know that great people did apply themselves to become what they are, and we know that within bounds everybody is equipped with the same mental facilities. How do we reconcile this? To the second point: Great people applied themselves over decades and tens of thousands of hours. This level of commitment can neither be forced upon you, nor can you make yourself do it with discipline. You will have to find a drive inside yourself to do it. All things being equal and your personality being fully formed as you enter your teens, the answer obviously is that how that happens is your personality. You cannot predict how the personality of a person will interact with that persons life and goals, so there is no "identifyable". But with hindsight you can analyze a person and see what made somebody apply himself consistently for decades. And every person is different, so you cannot predict if a person will become great or not.
diego 14y ago
Remember that you're looking at survivors. The obvious question is how many people studied, practiced, and never became great. You'd have to look at the initial pool.
- Confusion 14y ago
  While you wait for confirmation that studying and practicing increases your changes of becoming Great at what you do, I'm just gonna go practice, expecting to race way ahead of you. I don't need an academic study to confirm the obvious: practice makes perfect. If all survivors did A and none did not do A, then A is likely to be at least a precondition. But more than that: the number of people that choose to spend time deliberately studying and practicing is already so small that there is room for them all to be Great. I am convinced that nearly every single person that deliberately studies and practices to become better at what he does will become Great at what he does, because 'Great' is a relative concept and most people are easily contented.
  - diego 14y ago
    That is an unnecessarily aggressive comment. What makes you think you're racing against me? "Practice makes perfect" is a platitude, not something obvious. Like another commenter said, I could practice infinitely and never be any good at basketball. I just don't have the body type. On the other hand, I was a pretty good programmer at 13, one year after discovering computers (1983). I could tell you that what made me "great" (I'm rich thanks to software) was practice and studying. In reality, it was mostly luck. Think what you want.
    - Confusion 14y ago
      It was not intended aggressively, but rather rhetorically. We are not racing against each other, but if you intend to be 'good' at something, you are in a competition with a great many other. If you find excuses not to improve yourself, you will definitely not be 'good'. If you practiced basketball every day for the next year, and enjoyed doing that, you'd be an excellent basketball player after that year. That you couldn't make it as a pro doesn't detract anything from that. There's a near infinite amount of things every single one of us could do if they wanted to. The only problem is that we usually do not want to. The number of things that you truly can't do because it depends on some physical characteristic is fairly limited. You could be a physics professor, an awesome captain, an excellent stock broker or a locally successful artist. You are just not interested in any of those things.
austenallred 14y ago
I don't know; I've never written much, and I didn't read nearly as much as I should have in my youth, but I always did seem to have a natural propensity for writing. For some kids in my class it was a war. They had to really battle to make the words come out on a page in a way that was as comprehendable as is their vocal speech, but for me I needed only to type and let it flow. So I while I agree with the notion that one will become better with practice, I question the ideas that all will progress at a similar rate and that the "ceiling" for their abilities are at the same level of skill. I think a bit of success bias is operating here. If you take the average NBA player and ask him why he made it, he'll likely cite hard work, having a winning attitude, or something to a similar effect. The fact that he is six foot six never enters into the equation. The chances of an athletically gifted giant making it to the NBA are inherently different than those of one who may have a natural tendency to programm. To pretend like the two could switch places and, having put in a lot of practice hours, end up in the same place, is either naïveté or self-deception.
- Confusion 14y ago
  The ceiling doesn't need to be equal for them all to be in the top 0.1% called 'Great'.

pyalot2 14y ago

It's a fact that you cannot become better at something without doing it. But it is not guaranteed that you become better at something because you're doing it. The personality traits that let you become a great writer or programmer are not innate in everybody. And for the most part you can't reshape a personality to have the right traits. It's not talent, but the right precondition to make use of the practice.

Confusion 14y ago
It is practically guaranteed that you will become better if you 'study and practice', which implies the explicit goal of becoming better. It's almost impossible to become worse by practicing with the explicit goal of becoming better. I don't have any reason to believe there exists such a thing as an identifiable "personality trait that let's you become a great writer or programmer". Perhaps a predisposition towards "being good at what you do" and "practicing and studying to become better" is such a thing, but when I speak for myself I know such tendencies can thoroughly change over time. I believe it's easy to engage in armchair psychology, while simultaneously thinking ourselves members of a special breed.
- pyalot2 14y ago
  Becoming better isn't the same as becoming great. I don't think there is such a thing as an identifiable personality trait, not in the way you mean it. Yet I'll propose to you a simple proof of two points. The first point is that there is more going on than simply applying yourself. And the second point is that whatever that is, it has to do with your personality. To the first point: If there was a recipe to greatness (the Amadeus, Shakespeare, Einstein, Goedel, Knuth kind) then everybody would simply do it and we'd be a race of supermen. So obviously any argument for the existence of such a recipe has to be fundamentally flawed. This presents us with a paradox, as we do know that great people did apply themselves to become what they are, and we know that within bounds everybody is equipped with the same mental facilities. How do we reconcile this? To the second point: Great people applied themselves over decades and tens of thousands of hours. This level of commitment can neither be forced upon you, nor can you make yourself do it with discipline. You will have to find a drive inside yourself to do it. All things being equal and your personality being fully formed as you enter your teens, the answer obviously is that how that happens is your personality. You cannot predict how the personality of a person will interact with that persons life and goals, so there is no "identifyable". But with hindsight you can analyze a person and see what made somebody apply himself consistently for decades. And every person is different, so you cannot predict if a person will become great or not.

diego 14y ago

Remember that you're looking at survivors. The obvious question is how many people studied, practiced, and never became great. You'd have to look at the initial pool.

Confusion 14y ago
While you wait for confirmation that studying and practicing increases your changes of becoming Great at what you do, I'm just gonna go practice, expecting to race way ahead of you. I don't need an academic study to confirm the obvious: practice makes perfect. If all survivors did A and none did not do A, then A is likely to be at least a precondition. But more than that: the number of people that choose to spend time deliberately studying and practicing is already so small that there is room for them all to be Great. I am convinced that nearly every single person that deliberately studies and practices to become better at what he does will become Great at what he does, because 'Great' is a relative concept and most people are easily contented.
- diego 14y ago
  That is an unnecessarily aggressive comment. What makes you think you're racing against me? "Practice makes perfect" is a platitude, not something obvious. Like another commenter said, I could practice infinitely and never be any good at basketball. I just don't have the body type. On the other hand, I was a pretty good programmer at 13, one year after discovering computers (1983). I could tell you that what made me "great" (I'm rich thanks to software) was practice and studying. In reality, it was mostly luck. Think what you want.
  - Confusion 14y ago
    It was not intended aggressively, but rather rhetorically. We are not racing against each other, but if you intend to be 'good' at something, you are in a competition with a great many other. If you find excuses not to improve yourself, you will definitely not be 'good'. If you practiced basketball every day for the next year, and enjoyed doing that, you'd be an excellent basketball player after that year. That you couldn't make it as a pro doesn't detract anything from that. There's a near infinite amount of things every single one of us could do if they wanted to. The only problem is that we usually do not want to. The number of things that you truly can't do because it depends on some physical characteristic is fairly limited. You could be a physics professor, an awesome captain, an excellent stock broker or a locally successful artist. You are just not interested in any of those things.

austenallred 14y ago

I don't know; I've never written much, and I didn't read nearly as much as I should have in my youth, but I always did seem to have a natural propensity for writing. For some kids in my class it was a war. They had to really battle to make the words come out on a page in a way that was as comprehendable as is their vocal speech, but for me I needed only to type and let it flow. So I while I agree with the notion that one will become better with practice, I question the ideas that all will progress at a similar rate and that the "ceiling" for their abilities are at the same level of skill. I think a bit of success bias is operating here. If you take the average NBA player and ask him why he made it, he'll likely cite hard work, having a winning attitude, or something to a similar effect. The fact that he is six foot six never enters into the equation. The chances of an athletically gifted giant making it to the NBA are inherently different than those of one who may have a natural tendency to programm. To pretend like the two could switch places and, having put in a lot of practice hours, end up in the same place, is either naïveté or self-deception.

Confusion 14y ago
The ceiling doesn't need to be equal for them all to be in the top 0.1% called 'Great'.