I think the next person who says I just was born with a “smart brain” I’m going to fucking rip out their throat. The absolute nerve to say that. They had no idea how much I have had to struggle to get here. I’ve worked my fucking ass off because I’m actually kinda a dumbfuck. I probably got black out drunk most weekends of the second half of high school and throughout college.

No, I don’t have a fucking “smart math computer brain” u narrow minded nincompoop. I just chose to be smarter than you bc I worked harder. Get out of my face and go make yourself useful since u clearly don’t have the capacity to contribute anything intelligent to our society.

Yes reading a lot, studying, banging my head in d walls, trying all approaches I can think of ( maybe some of them twice ), copy-pasting and working hard/smart/the lazy way do helps a lot there is something we don't learn in school or from the books ( at least not directly ) and that is the way of analithical thinking, critical thinking, and on top of that some ppl don't seems to think much if at all...

Smart is good but tenacious usually always will prevail.

And to be honest, your smart enough to not give up at first obstacle, which is more than most.

But pure smartness or intelligence is not enough? Without the knowledge to work with its like an empty computer or a racecar without fuel.

Curiosity and stubbornness are good companions to smarts :)

Some can try as hard as they want and will not get math... or basic physics... or just how to use a simple UI properly. And some can't even try.

I met some of both groups. They just don't seem to have the capability to understand complex stuff they aren't super interested in or even to understand complex stuff at all.

If you are even just slightly interested in software development, you basically are already a Harry Potter surrounded by muggles. And if you aren't interested in it but did get good regardless, that would require a willpower that is even more rare a gift.

So compared to the masses, you most likely do have a special brain (chemistry).

As my guitar teacher would say, effort can make up for lack of talent, but talent will never make up for lack of effort.

Some people considered weird why I program so well because according to them I'm was always in a bar. Yes - but any second out of it I was programming. People don't see that

@retoor aren't there wifi in the bar ;)

@We3D haha, yes! Even got a bar chromebook always with me!

My boss expects people to learn to be self sufficient with using computers. His first test for his technical employees is to setup the build environment. There is information in a database for this. This database is updated and accessible through a web interface on our lan.

He also expects everyone to figure out how to solve common problems like printers and making settings changes in our software. He gets a bit irate when people bother the technical people because they cannot figure out how to install a program or some stupid shit like that.

Now this is a humble brag.

@Oktokolo I disagree - I think that anyone can learn anything and be successful in it - it comes down to how much interest you have in it. I think “talent” is less influential than we think it is.

@chonky-quiche that is how Larry Byrd was able to play basketball. He wasn't as good as other players. So spent more time practicing than anyone else. Same with Jordan.

@Demolishun imagine if Shaq had put some more time on his penalty shots ;]

@evilskua 🤣

@CoreFusionX that was a very good framing of that message :)

@evilskua bar, foo bar, it always ends up fubar

@chonky-quiche and much of that talent could very well just be interest.

curiosity dives most of us... like what else is out there waiting to be learned/discovered

.... or it is just the money for some ;}

@We3D two of my exes learn programming with money as motivation. They don't succeed. Also, their online learning tools to make learning as easy possible - so easy, they don't remember a thing. But these days there are so much technologies you won't read an entire book in most cases. I prefer books (and read 50%)

@retoor from the begining I prefer reading/learning on pc. even before php online docs was made I used their offline manual simply b/c I can search what I need.

w/ books that task takes longer ( haven't even tried ) and txt mainly... if d vid is short and specific I might try though

...bit of a chaotic learner, never learning what I don't need @ hand ( knowing that w/o practice will forget it pretty soon )

@retoor I wish I read more programming books but I can’t seem to get into them

@chonky-quiche

Talent exists. You don't need to invest in it, you have it or not.

Though I like the word aptitude more - it says you have a natural attraction to something.

With training one can definitely improve a lack of talent, but only a lack of talent.

If you have zero talent at all, meaning you have for example no aptitude for programming, then no... you cannot overcome this with training.

Just as an example from my mentor days for interns ... You can teach someone to program, without a doubt. But when someone has no aptitude for abstract thinking and problem solving, they will never be able to become a successful programmer.

They can reproduce code they learned / know, but writing their own code or developing a solution on their own? Nope.

Accept that people give compliments based on what they see - without having the time to guess your backstory or how you got to this point.

When someone is great it's hard to imagine they aren't a natural talent. That's just high praise.

I'm sure all great musicians hear a lot of "you've got rhythm in your blood" even if they didn't and had to practice for ages to even learn a single chord. But the person complimenting them doesn't know that. And even if they did they might say "You were just born to play!" rather than "You have zero natural talent but your work ethic is impressive" :/

@IntrusionCM to a point yes but I again disagree that talent is a huge force of how the world works. It has proven again and again that anyone can change their entire being and mind (and body) if you actually put the work in. I think the talent we mostly refer to is how interested we become in something, and if our subconscious is totally behind it, chances are it will get accomplished. Talent exists somewhat, but the more I experience the world, I see that it’s only a tiny tiny advantage compared to what actual effort does.

@jiraTicket not accepted - it’s still a dumb compliment. It’s a dismissive comment on how interested they are in you. I would rather them just not say anything.

@chonky-quiche

Agree totally.

I'm just saying that when someone has zero talent they can put in as much work as they can, they will not pull it off.

@IntrusionCM fair enough

@retoor I once tried to work from d beach @ a family mainly camping

And those damn young milfs r almost constantly in my fov

... I mean I really tried ( brought my laptop there after all )... but soon realized that won't happen ( about 15 mins on each of the 2 tries to do something )

@chonky-quiche Sure - if they are super interested in it, they can learn it - except when they can't.

There are disabilities and there are talents. Both aren't fairly distributed. Then there also are interest, frustration tolerance, willpower and environmental factors. Most who are try hard studying something that they aren't actually talented and interested in, just fail.

Hard work doesn't guarantee success. Life isn't fair. Higher math or abstract thinking isn't actually something the masses can just learn (well, maybe it is possible at very young age like the perfect ear). Most that try, just outright fail or end up as huge archives of rules or formulas for how to derive the correct result for a given problem. They apply canned recipes and can become really good and fast at that.

But they never become able to derive solutions for problems they never encountered before by themselves. In the dev realm, we call them code monkeys because they aren't actual devs...

@Oktokolo fair - but also the chance of a better education and a better understanding of how people learn could be potentially beneficial for future generations no? I feel like this superposition of “talent” can make young people feel like they only have one path in life.

@chonky-quiche Of course. Basic and higher education should be free and accessible to everyone.

People in general should try different things (and be given time to do so), so they have a chance to get a feeling for what they are actually interested in and what is easy for them to git gud in (yeah, i know, it will always be video games now - but they surely also find something else if their environment enables and encourages them to try a lot of other things).

Being "smart" as a kid can also have (secondary) detrimental effects, like being bored at school and thus not really developing discipline and learning to learn (apart from things you're actually curious about). That hit me hard later when stuff stopped being easy to grasp without the hard work!

@chonky-quiche

IMHO that's a general problem.

E.g. job recommendations.

I've encountered numerous times a person who came from e.g. job counseling, fresh from college or stuff like that and was told that they "had a talent for X, they should do X".

Most of the time it was true - they had a talent for X and they could do X.

But I also encountered the complete opposite: Yeah they had a knack for X, but their talent was rather in Y. Which they were completely unaware of cause they've been continuously pushed to X by school / counseling / etc.

That's a huge problem imho in the current education and job market.

People are either completely unaware of their talents, cause exploring stuff is expensive and unwanted (by school / parents / ....) or they were turned into a "golden cage prodigy" - talent for X, so they *must* do X.

It's funny when you have for example a 30 year old sitting in front of you who suddenly realizes that "the other stuff" is far more interesting and makes more fun than the "stuff they were told they are good at and should do".

(Sorry for getting off topic a bit :) )

@IntrusionCM I think talent (or unconscious devotion) can also arise from the necessity of self preservation. Like the way I see it is early in life, educative and family pressures can force a person to go into fight or flight mode. Where fighting would include adopting that field into their interest so that they become eventually good at it. That’s what may lead to the repressed FOMO later in life and regret of not following their initial childhood interest to begin with possibly? Idk..

@Oktokolo potentially. The way I see it is we exhibit too much control over kids on what they learn, but not on what they don’t have access to. I think the best way to raise a child is to COMPLETELY remove access to a lot of unnecessary gratification (internet, TV, sugary foods, etc…) to a certain age. This requires the parents to be extremely disciplined themselves. However, on the flip side, we free up a child’s educative process - reducing overall school hours (especially for younger children) and giving way more freedom in curriculums.

@chonky-quiche What children are allowed to experience - or rather not experience is a pretty controversial topic. I am pretty convinced that lack of cheap neurochemical gratification is as bad as an abundance of it.

The solution as always is to do actual parenting and spend lots of for and with your children. For example watching videos or exploring some topic together.

Of course, the child still needs a lot of unsupervised time too - but that also requires parents to spend time as they have to curate what media should be accessible to the child (and in the current age of the internet, that means curating an axtensive allowlist as blocklists just don't work). Different children have different needs and abilities.

Doing parenting right can be pretty hard as childrens' dispositions and personalities don't neccessarily match that of their parents. Some here know exectly what i mean...

@Oktokolo yeah but they also need to be outside most of the time doing random shit. Indoor childhood needs to stop lol.

@chonky-quiche They need some exercise and some exposure to nature. But how much highly depends on the child. They sadly and luckily aren't standardized products.

@Oktokolo I mean unless they have some disability preventing them from doing so I would say being outside is applicable for every single human as a positive good. The parents who coddle their kids instead of challenging them to do better I would consider failures as parents.

It's better to be struggling first. Otherwise you'll be good at first but then fall off hard and fast and might not return.

@iiii there’s also an additional experience that’s hard and fast that I have