Thursday, January 14, 2010

Reflections on 10,000 Hours

I am reading a great book by Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers. Upon reading about the 10,000-hour rule, I began to see the connection with capital P programmers. We are not born this way. While we may have an aptitude for certain abilities, most of what it takes is just plain old practice. I spent the years from 1987 to 2000 doing nothing but programming in every available moment I had. I did not have a social life to speak of, only my connection to the pure logic and meritocracy of the computer universe. Most of my friends and relatives were busy maintaining familial obligations while I immersed myself in the computer world-- from transistors to the foundations of computer science itself. Since then, I have been less extreme but nonetheless focused and consequently isolated. Is this the price to pay for "success", however we measure it? I guess I'll thinkk about this more as I read on.

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