I didn't get the sense that he intended "10,000 hours" as a pseudo-scientific assertion of fact. It's a useful poetic phrase to express the observation that ma

I didn't get the sense that he intended "10,000 hours" as a pseudo-scientific assertion of fact. It's a useful poetic phrase to express the observation that mastery takes time. Sure you could call that a Captain Obvious observation. However he used it in opposition to the idea that great programmers can master a new language in a few weeks. Since that idea is so popular, its opposite apparently is not so obvious.