<story><title>Why Do Some People Learn Faster?</title><url>http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/why-do-some-people-learn-faster-2/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tpatke</author><text>I think about Spolsky&apos;s post on programmer productivity quite often [1].  I think the most interesting part of the post is when he says, &quot;The mediocre talent just &lt;i&gt;never&lt;/i&gt; hits the high notes that the top talent hits all the time.&quot;  Obviously, I wonder if I am a programmer who can hit the high notes and, if not, what it will take to get there.&lt;p&gt;When I read a post like this, I try to apply it to making myself a better programmer in the &quot;high note&quot; sense.  Trouble is - it just doesn&apos;t apply (and I am a huge fan of Dweck&apos;s work).  This article is one for the masses - not people who are trying to create the next Google.  Motivation, hard work and an ability to learn from mistakes are all necessary, but ultimately not sufficient for our craft.&lt;p&gt;If I had to guess what the missing ingredient is, I would say creativity.&lt;p&gt;Heck - we are programmers.  We get immediate feedback on our mistakes all day long and anyone reading this post has most likely gotten really really good and learning from those mistakes.  ...but, how many of us are hitting those high notes?&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kevinalexbrown</author><text>EDIT: So I got a coke and thought about this a bit. I like your point, but I feel like maybe the high-noters are high-noters precisely &lt;i&gt;because&lt;/i&gt; they&apos;re ruthlessly self-critical and growth-minded. Ever see someone who was really good at something cringe after what you thought was an amazing performance, because they missed, e.g. the f6 in Mozart&apos;s Queen of the Night? They&apos;re better (honest?) at seeing their mistakes, and they&apos;re better at addressing them. Maybe that&apos;s the natural talent?&lt;p&gt;Aside from the tone, maybe, this article is not &apos;one for the masses.&apos;&lt;p&gt;Jony Ive didn&apos;t just sit down and whip up the iPod, to use Spolsky&apos;s example. We don&apos;t see the blood/sweat/tears that goes into it. From Ive:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;One of the hallmarks of our team is this sense of looking to be wrong ... It’s about being excited to be wrong because then you’ve discovered something new.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Obviously Ive has the creative ingredient. And some are going to be predisposed with talent. Michael Jordan may have had his famous &quot;4am club&quot; where he hit the court every morning to just drill, but so did Scotty Pippen, and he never hit the Jordan high note clutch performances that make my jaw drop watching 20-year-old replays. So I see your point, that talent matters. But the other way to look at it is that Jordan was just better at learning from his mistakes in those 4am practices.&lt;p&gt;So no, this is not some pedestrian piece of feel-good soup. Great work, in programming, design, anything, is about repeatedly pushing a boundary, recognizing where you messed up, fixing it, and repeating that all over again. The people who do this best are the people who believe that by iterating they can get better. This works even as you get all the way up into the stratosphere of a field.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1367481/Apples-Jonathan-Ive-How-did-British-polytechnic-graduate-design-genius.html#ixzz1nEKjLSAN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1367481/Appl...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Do Some People Learn Faster?</title><url>http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/why-do-some-people-learn-faster-2/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tpatke</author><text>I think about Spolsky&apos;s post on programmer productivity quite often [1].  I think the most interesting part of the post is when he says, &quot;The mediocre talent just &lt;i&gt;never&lt;/i&gt; hits the high notes that the top talent hits all the time.&quot;  Obviously, I wonder if I am a programmer who can hit the high notes and, if not, what it will take to get there.&lt;p&gt;When I read a post like this, I try to apply it to making myself a better programmer in the &quot;high note&quot; sense.  Trouble is - it just doesn&apos;t apply (and I am a huge fan of Dweck&apos;s work).  This article is one for the masses - not people who are trying to create the next Google.  Motivation, hard work and an ability to learn from mistakes are all necessary, but ultimately not sufficient for our craft.&lt;p&gt;If I had to guess what the missing ingredient is, I would say creativity.&lt;p&gt;Heck - we are programmers.  We get immediate feedback on our mistakes all day long and anyone reading this post has most likely gotten really really good and learning from those mistakes.  ...but, how many of us are hitting those high notes?&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jackpirate</author><text>It&apos;s very easy for us to forget about variance and standard deviation of programmer productivity when all other factors are equal.  Let&apos;s imagine we have 1000 of the world&apos;s best programmers working for a year on creative projects.  All of them will try something innovative.  Only some of them, however, will succeed.&lt;p&gt;Who succeeds is a function of what projects they were working on.  And that, is almost purely random and a result of circumstances.  We like to think that Sergey and Larey were more brilliant than anyone else, for example, but the truth is they just stumbled into the right thing at the right time.&lt;p&gt;Don&apos;t discredit yourself as a programmer for not yet having a huge stroke of luck.</text></comment>