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The truth is that programming isn't a passion or a talent, it is just a bunch of skills that can be learned. I have to disagree with this part. I always consid

The truth is that programming isn't a passion or a talent, it is just a bunch of skills that can be learned. I have to disagree with this part. I always considered passion to be a huge part of talent. And you can be passionate about anything in life. Anyone can learn any skills (from painting to solving differential equations). However, if you're passionate about using those skills, you learn faster, easier, and you're more inclined to spend your time honing them and developing a deeper understanding.

t0mbstone 11y ago
Programming is, for the most part, a mental exercise. How good someone is at programming is a combination of their problem solving skills (natural talent), their existing knowledge, and their ability to seek out and learn answers to problems they don't already know the answer to. The talent part of the equation is a big factor, and ultimately determines where the individual tops out their skill set and "plateaus". For an example of this, look at chess players and the ELO rating system. Chess is purely mental and has many similar parallels to programming. I've met hundreds of chess players who have been playing chess for years, logging thousands of games. Many of them study the game on a regular basis and attend tournaments, and they all have ratings. A beginner chess player starts with a provisional rating of 1200, which goes up or down depending on wins or losses logged over time. Grand masters are players that have earned a rating of at least 2600 or higher. For every chess grand master out there (think of them as a 10x or even 100x producer), there are thousands of chess players that have been slogging away for years without their ratings improving past even 1500. They are simply blocked by their lack of natural talent, no matter how much they study or practice. This is a fact that is objectively measurable and is backed up by millions of data points from officially rated chess games. There's no reason why the same laws of nature related to raw mental talent (specifically problem solving and memorization) wouldn't also apply to programmers.

t0mbstone 11y ago

Programming is, for the most part, a mental exercise. How good someone is at programming is a combination of their problem solving skills (natural talent), their existing knowledge, and their ability to seek out and learn answers to problems they don't already know the answer to. The talent part of the equation is a big factor, and ultimately determines where the individual tops out their skill set and "plateaus". For an example of this, look at chess players and the ELO rating system. Chess is purely mental and has many similar parallels to programming. I've met hundreds of chess players who have been playing chess for years, logging thousands of games. Many of them study the game on a regular basis and attend tournaments, and they all have ratings. A beginner chess player starts with a provisional rating of 1200, which goes up or down depending on wins or losses logged over time. Grand masters are players that have earned a rating of at least 2600 or higher. For every chess grand master out there (think of them as a 10x or even 100x producer), there are thousands of chess players that have been slogging away for years without their ratings improving past even 1500. They are simply blocked by their lack of natural talent, no matter how much they study or practice. This is a fact that is objectively measurable and is backed up by millions of data points from officially rated chess games. There's no reason why the same laws of nature related to raw mental talent (specifically problem solving and memorization) wouldn't also apply to programmers.