Ask HN: Why do many people assume there's no such thing as programming talent?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9503977

by RecursiveLogic • 11 years ago

8 6 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

It seems to me rather ludicrous to even think that every single human being is born with the same exactly amount of neurons and everyone has the same exact levels of plasticity in their brain, but that's exactly what's being assumed when people say there's no "talent" involved. Or am I missing something and there's actually no such thing? Wouldn't it be logical to assume that if just those two cases are true, then there indeed can be gaps in learning speed and upper bound levels of comprehension on not just programming, but learning everything else in general?

Isn't it rather logical to assume that we all didn't take care of ourselves as good as possibly others either due to laziness or unfortunate environmental factors? And if that's the case, isn't it logical that that too would have a role in the development of our brains, our ultimate potential as to how "plastic" our brains could be, among other factors? We see immediate differences in people being born with different heights, doesn't it make sense to assume not all brains are created and raised equally?

Just wanted to see what everyone's thought was on this since I practically never see this side of the argument when it comes to topics like "programming talent" and such.

pliny• 11 years ago

Who says that?

Who are 'many people'?

How do they substantiate that assumption?

dalke• 11 years ago

The ancient Greeks tried to use logic to understand the world. It was a good start. In the Enlightenment we found that experimental evidence was more important. Many of the logical Greek ideas were found to be simply untrue.

I'll start from the top. How do you measure "talent"? I'm not suggesting that there be a scientific instrument - any sort of measure, from "value added profit to a company" to "number of conference presentations" to "number of people in a random sample who say that X is talented".

You suggested that the number of neurons or brain plasticity might be important. We know that the size of the brain is not well correlated with intelligence; Einstein famously had an average sized brain. And while neural plasticity is a useful metaphor, it comes in many forms. Which do you mean, how do you measure it, and how strong is the correlation to talent?

We know that talent is extremely dependent on the environment. Consider Ronald Colman, who was a popular actor in the silent film era but whose career didn't take off until the talkies, when the audience fell in love with "his beautifully modulated and cultured voice", or Lars Hanson who believed that his heavy Swedish accent wouldn't do so well in Hollywood so moved back to Sweden. He was successful in the Swedish film industry, so by one measure of talent - made a living on his ability - he was talented, but by another measure - lifetime revenue - he was less talented than if he were better at English or of there were a higher demand for films with people with a Swedish accent.

Or look at the relative age effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect ) where talented sports players - defined as those in the upper levels of their respective sports - are disproportionally born in the early part of the year. The hypothesis is that as children these people were slightly bigger, stronger, and faster than the others in their cohort, so were more likely to do better, and receive extra training and support.

There are also systemic issues, which is the only reason I can think of to explain the decreasing presence of women in computing from its peak of 38% of awarded CS degrees in the early 1980s to ~18% now.

How do you disentangle the intrinsic talent portion that you think might have an effect from the large number of known environmental effects?

You posit that "we all didn't take care of ourselves as good as possibly others either due to laziness or unfortunate environmental factors", which does consider some environmental factors. However, the main part of the hypothesis is "we all didn't take care of ourselves". What does it mean to "take care of ourself"? How do we tell if someone is doing a good job of taking care of oneself, in such a way that it does not preclude talent development? If it can only be usefully measured in a post hoc fashion, then it's victim blaming.

(Failing to take care of oneself is an obvious problem. I presume you mean something more than maintaining a basic lifestyle, as many people do that and don't get labeled "talented".)

K. Anders Ericsson, for example, stresses the role of extended deliberate practice on expertise. Is "talent" different from "expertise"? If so, how? And what practices are better for talent growth than expertise growth?

Similarly, if there is talent that is somehow independent of expertise, how do people in general tell? For example, one famous Stanford report finds "that praising effort, not talent, leads to greater motivation and more positive attitudes toward challenges five years later". (See http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/february/talking-to-baby-... ). The hypothesis is that if a child believes that success at X is due to talent, and doesn't immediately succeed at X then that child concludes that she/he doesn't have the talent for X so doesn't try. When it's more the case that success at X is due to effort and practice, not intrinsic talent.

mrcold• 11 years ago

The same reason the concept of "street smart" exists. People don't want to accept when they are being stupid.

Each an every one of us can clearly identify talent as the ability to do or create amazing things. But because people want to feel special, they twist and turn their perspective until they become special to themselves. "Intelligent? Well, you didn't make billions, so it must mean you're dumb. Athletic? Well, you didn't score that touchdown, so I could probably outrun you. Good at programming? Please. I could whip up a better solution in minutes if I wanted to learn programming."

It's basic politics. Skewing reality with faulty logic in order to gain something. Usually feeling good about yourself.

M8• 11 years ago

Also companies like Facebook and Google simply want to have access to a bigger pool of developers to reduce the compensation costs. Hence promoting the idea that everyone can program: http://code.org .

bbcbasic• 11 years ago

I don't know the answer, but I wonder if 'talent' is really 'love'?

If you love programming then you are more likely to practice and learn for the pure fun and thrill of it. And lots of practice leads to becoming an expert and appearing to others as talented.

On the other hand you can conjecture that talent comes first, and this is what causes the love of the subject.

kasey_junk• 11 years ago

This is a pretty dramatic straw man.

I've never heard anyone state that there's no such thing as programming talent. There are many more nuanced ways of looking at programming talent (or really talent in many things):

1) "Programming Talent" is far too general a term to attach to any mechanistic views of brain ability. That is, being "good at programming" has such a broad reach that nearly everyone who is "good" at programming is really good at some very small niche at programming and frequently the skills that make them good at that aspect can be actually detrimental in other niches. This same argument holds about other talents as well. For instance, height is a phenomenal advantage in basketball. But being tall doesn't correlate with eye-hand coordination, agility, or foot speed. Each one of those is also a phenomenal advantage and having all of them at once is exceedingly rare.

2) Another argument is that unlike in basketball where height is a phenomenal physical advantage, the differences between a "talented" programmer and an untalented one are dramatically muted in comparison to other factors such as proper education, proper workplace environment, proper management, etc. So focusing on the talent is not as interesting in programming as it is in basketball.

3) Yet another argument is that we can't identify what programming talent is, so it is a difference without distinction. Is a programmer more productive than their peers because they are talented or because they have better work habits generally? It is very hard to suss out so what difference does it make?

4) Finally, an argument that resonates with me, is that programmer productivity is not bi-modal. That is, for most of the population of programmers they experience dramatic swings in productivity. This swings are more correlated with external factors than any innate ability and you can move along the productivity scale back and forth throughout your life time and talent is largely swamped by these external factors.

Ask HN: Why do many people assume there's no such thing as programming talent?

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