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It is not Math, Science that is Boring that is the problem. It's the level of effort required to be good and to become better. More than almost any other indust

It is not Math, Science that is Boring that is the problem. It's the level of effort required to be good and to become better. More than almost any other industry or skill, if you get easily frustrated or you can't focus (well) - you won't get enough experience (read: doing stuff the wrong way or failing) to get better. It is the frustration and ambiguity that one has to deal with when solving technical problems. Remember, most technical problems aren't cut and dried - sometimes the problem is correctly finding what the problem is. To be good in this industry - you have to want to go down the rabbit hole and spelunk. To get your hands and mind dirty.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> It is the frustration and ambiguity that one has to deal with when solving technical problems. Basically, you're saying people today can't handle frustration. I have a hunch that this is true, and someone should research into this.
sophacles 13y ago
Maybe tangential to the point of the article, but I find that one of the most frustrating things about working with recent college grads is that they don't understand the ambiguity. It's not thier fault - they have spent the last 16+ years being told[1] there is a right answer. It is ingrained in them, and a lot of effort must be put forth to teach them that most of the work worth doing in our field is by definition not "solved". If there was a right answer or known best solution, we'd just be using that library and focusing on the ambiguous bits instead. Yes there is a lot of boilerplate and plugging existing components together, but that stuff isn't the work that really brings in the bucks - it's the part where you are solving something previously unsolved, and making headway against ambiguous problem spaces that really differentiates companies/products/teams etc. [1] It's more than being taught, it is being rewarded and punished on the notion of "one right answer" that happens in huge amounts of education. It gets mixed up with the limbic system and becomes a default assumption for everything. It has to be un-taught in a lot of contexts. Sure, there is a best or right answer for many things, and we need to show that too, but more education on how to deal with the ambiguous stuff is much needed.
g9yuayon 13y ago
It's really because teachers and parents failed to teach kids how to perform deliberate practice, which requires handling a certain level of difficulties.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

> It is the frustration and ambiguity that one has to deal with when solving technical problems. Basically, you're saying people today can't handle frustration. I have a hunch that this is true, and someone should research into this.

sophacles 13y ago

Maybe tangential to the point of the article, but I find that one of the most frustrating things about working with recent college grads is that they don't understand the ambiguity. It's not thier fault - they have spent the last 16+ years being told[1] there is a right answer. It is ingrained in them, and a lot of effort must be put forth to teach them that most of the work worth doing in our field is by definition not "solved". If there was a right answer or known best solution, we'd just be using that library and focusing on the ambiguous bits instead. Yes there is a lot of boilerplate and plugging existing components together, but that stuff isn't the work that really brings in the bucks - it's the part where you are solving something previously unsolved, and making headway against ambiguous problem spaces that really differentiates companies/products/teams etc. [1] It's more than being taught, it is being rewarded and punished on the notion of "one right answer" that happens in huge amounts of education. It gets mixed up with the limbic system and becomes a default assumption for everything. It has to be un-taught in a lot of contexts. Sure, there is a best or right answer for many things, and we need to show that too, but more education on how to deal with the ambiguous stuff is much needed.

g9yuayon 13y ago

It's really because teachers and parents failed to teach kids how to perform deliberate practice, which requires handling a certain level of difficulties.