<story><title>The Painful Price of Becoming Jackie Chan</title><url>https://newrepublic.com/article/152848/painful-price-becoming-jackie-chan</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>karmelapple</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Great fighters have to kind of like getting hit.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d generalize it to: &amp;quot;Great craftspeople have to kind of like the part of their craft that is unpleasant to 99% of the population.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Someone who excels at playing violin, writing computer software, public speaking, etc., generally does not find the &amp;quot;unpleasant&amp;quot; part to be &amp;quot;tiring&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;boring&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;work&amp;quot;. Instead, it&amp;#x27;s just part of the overall experience, which is a net positive.&lt;p&gt;When I was younger, I had a classmate who&amp;#x27;s an excellent violin player. Her practice schedule sounded awful to me, with well over an hour spent even on weekdays. I played musical instruments, too, and I liked a little practice, but rarely more than 30 minutes in a day.&lt;p&gt;I asked the violin player about this schedule, and the way she answered the question made it clear that practicing didn&amp;#x27;t seem unpleasant, or like &amp;quot;work,&amp;quot; like it would to many other people. It was something she truly enjoyed.&lt;p&gt;Similar things can be applied to software development and liking the idea of investigating obtuse error messages and things breaking without any clear root cause.</text></item><item><author>vinceguidry</author><text>The author doesn&amp;#x27;t want to treat Chan&amp;#x27;s insistence on his account being an inspirational one and just wants to see it as sad.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m reminded of a Quora answer by a guy who loved fighting, one phrase he used stuck out at me. &amp;quot;Great fighters have to kind of like getting hit.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t push your body to its very limits without getting injured. Planning and preparing for it is not sad, it&amp;#x27;s smart. Chan&amp;#x27;s account should be taken at face value. It is inspirational for all the reasons he thinks it is.&lt;p&gt;I mean, sure, it would be way better if Hong Kong weren&amp;#x27;t the colonial hell-hole it was. Chan rose above that and made a noticeable dent in the world. If he could do it in the situation he grew up in, anyone can.&lt;p&gt;As the Brits like to say, Chan and his story are exactly what it says on the tin. To say it&amp;#x27;s not demeans Chan and his life and his choices.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>_hardwaregeek</author><text>Yeah, I&amp;#x27;m a little skeptical of CS schools that try to shelter their students from suffering. While schools should obviously not attempt to break students, there should be a reasonable crescendo of difficulty within the program. Because, well, software development can be &lt;i&gt;hard&lt;/i&gt;. Students that don&amp;#x27;t like the hard parts don&amp;#x27;t like software development. This doesn&amp;#x27;t mean insanely hard &amp;quot;weed-out&amp;quot; classes, but simply projects that reflect the difficulty and demand of the real world.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Painful Price of Becoming Jackie Chan</title><url>https://newrepublic.com/article/152848/painful-price-becoming-jackie-chan</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>karmelapple</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Great fighters have to kind of like getting hit.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d generalize it to: &amp;quot;Great craftspeople have to kind of like the part of their craft that is unpleasant to 99% of the population.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Someone who excels at playing violin, writing computer software, public speaking, etc., generally does not find the &amp;quot;unpleasant&amp;quot; part to be &amp;quot;tiring&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;boring&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;work&amp;quot;. Instead, it&amp;#x27;s just part of the overall experience, which is a net positive.&lt;p&gt;When I was younger, I had a classmate who&amp;#x27;s an excellent violin player. Her practice schedule sounded awful to me, with well over an hour spent even on weekdays. I played musical instruments, too, and I liked a little practice, but rarely more than 30 minutes in a day.&lt;p&gt;I asked the violin player about this schedule, and the way she answered the question made it clear that practicing didn&amp;#x27;t seem unpleasant, or like &amp;quot;work,&amp;quot; like it would to many other people. It was something she truly enjoyed.&lt;p&gt;Similar things can be applied to software development and liking the idea of investigating obtuse error messages and things breaking without any clear root cause.</text></item><item><author>vinceguidry</author><text>The author doesn&amp;#x27;t want to treat Chan&amp;#x27;s insistence on his account being an inspirational one and just wants to see it as sad.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m reminded of a Quora answer by a guy who loved fighting, one phrase he used stuck out at me. &amp;quot;Great fighters have to kind of like getting hit.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t push your body to its very limits without getting injured. Planning and preparing for it is not sad, it&amp;#x27;s smart. Chan&amp;#x27;s account should be taken at face value. It is inspirational for all the reasons he thinks it is.&lt;p&gt;I mean, sure, it would be way better if Hong Kong weren&amp;#x27;t the colonial hell-hole it was. Chan rose above that and made a noticeable dent in the world. If he could do it in the situation he grew up in, anyone can.&lt;p&gt;As the Brits like to say, Chan and his story are exactly what it says on the tin. To say it&amp;#x27;s not demeans Chan and his life and his choices.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>skookumchuck</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m reminded of fighter pilots: &amp;quot;I can&amp;#x27;t believe I&amp;#x27;m being paid to fly!&amp;quot;</text></comment>