
Ask HN: How do people become experts? - non-entity
I&#x27;ve know a number of people who were <i>really</i> good at one thing or a handful of interrelated things. That might be a programming language or specific technology, some business domain or something else, but I&#x27;ve never quite figured out how they did it.<p>I&#x27;ve tried the deep dive thing a few times and always come out frustrated. It seems like the important stuff that differentiates the expert from someone with casual knowledge isn&#x27;t documented. Sometimes it&#x27;s explained by the knowledge being locked behind a paywall or IP protection of some sort. Sometimes its not, but the knowledge seems to be locked in the brains of a few individuals or organizations and can only be unlocked if your&#x27;e lucky enough for them to take you in (employment at a company that specializes in something, or having a mentor type relationship with another expert). On the other hand, a minority of the experts I know are nearly completely self taught and I&#x27;m struggling to figure out how to manage. Generally as a hobbysit Like I said every time I&#x27;ve tried to deep dive I reach a point where I&#x27;m not sure what I&#x27;m missing, where to find it.
======
kempbellt
They don't. They just gain expertise on subjects through trial-and-error and
first-hand experience.

Anyone who tries to convince you that your should pay for advice on "how to
become an expert" has expertise at only one thing: lying.

PS: I can teach you how to be an expert at spotting liars. For 5 dollars I'll
tell you the secret.

Behind paywall 1: First lesson - don't pay for lessons on expertise. For 5
more dollars, I'll let you read chapter 2

Behind paywall 2: You are almost there! So close! You should be getting
familiar with the trick by now. There was a secret lesson in part one. I'll
tell the secret behind the trick for just 5 more dollars.

Behind paywall 3: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool
me three times, and now we are here! Wanna know how I fooled you _three_
times? Only 5 more dollars!

Now you are 15 dollars into spending 5 dollars on how to spot a liar. Just 5
more dollars!

Once you figure out the trick, you can consider yourself an expert.

~~~
mansr
Following that method will make you a Scientologist, not an expert.

~~~
kempbellt
I am not familiar with Scientology, but you sound like an expert on the matter
so I'll take your word for it.

------
mansr
Niels Bohr, widely regarded as an expert, has said that an expert is someone
who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field. If you
want to become an expert, you should presumably pick a suitable narrow field
and start making mistakes.

~~~
WJW
Don't forget to also learn from those mistakes! :)

I agree though, expertise comes from trying all the configurations in a space
and learning which work and which don't. After a while you start to see the
patterns.

------
tedsanders
Many good answers here, but I want to emphasize one particular facet: other
experts help you become an expert.

A thousand years ago, anyone could have invented relatively basic math - but
they didn't. The reason is that they didn't have other people to inspire and
motivate and teach them.

Very little knowledge comes ab initio or from a vacuum. Expertise is not
created by working in isolation for decades. To build expertise, you need to
be interacting with other experts. This doesn't mean they need to teach you,
nor does it mean they need to be be in person. But you have to be at least
reading what they write.

It's much easier to reach the clouds if you stand on the shoulders of giants.

~~~
jairofloress
That's why Stackoverflow or this very site exists.

------
hpoe
> It seems like the important stuff that differentiates the expert from
> someone with casual knowledge isn't documented.

It isn't documented because it can't. The difference between an expert and a
novice is that an expert has been exposed to and working with a particular
subject for so long that there are higher level abstractions that have become
"chunked" or "codified" in their mind such that they look at the problem
differently than novice people.

Example

`for(int i = 0; i <= list.length; i++) { ... }`

A novice will see this and after parsing the pieces can tell you that this
takes a counter i and does an action until i is the length of the list.

A more experienced person will see this as a for loop iterating through a
list.

An even more experienced person may intuitively map this to the need of the
program to operate on a list data structure and begin to immediately start
asking why we didn't use a more functional approach, what effect will this
have on the program when my list has 0 items, is there a way I can simplfy
this code? Etc

The expert knows this not because he has read it in a book or because he
followed design docs, he knows because he has practiced 10,000 hours, which
includes doing something evaluating what went well, what did not, what could
be improved, looking for new knowledge and new ways to do things.

In contrast too the man who has practiced 1 hours 10,000 times that has
mindlessly written this block of code and continues to repeat this abstraction
because this is his go to and familiar tool.

~~~
TacticalCoder
What about the one who shall notice an off-by-one error?

~~~
smu
First thing I noticed too. I’m afraid you’re now the security expert.. ;)

~~~
distances
Or just that senior engineer who knows better than to allow a for loop to pass
code review!

------
codegeek
The biggest factor is Time. It takes a lot of time (in years) and different
types of experience (which again mostly comes with time) to become an expert
at one thing. You cannot deep dive into something within a short span of time
and become an expert.

I would use the analogy that just because a woman can have a baby in 9 months,
9 women cannot have a baby in 1 month. You must spend 9 months to have a baby.
So to be an expert at anything, it takes years of practice, errors, lessons
learned, experiences to fully grasp a topic as an expert.

~~~
ghaff
I _mostly_ agree. I suppose there's a question of "How much time." There are
certainly younger people who are experts in narrow areas. That said, in many
of the most obvious cases, they've gotten doctorates or otherwise have really
devoted themselves to drilling down into some technology area (and working
with other people in that area). So you're still talking years, even if "only"
single digit years.

------
toast0
> I've tried the deep dive thing a few times and always come out frustrated.
> It seems like the important stuff that differentiates the expert from
> someone with casual knowledge isn't documented.

What the experts know is the things that aren't documented. Some of those are
things that are hard to document, because the right thing to do requires
situational knowledge, others are things that experts don't realize aren't
obvious.

The way to become an expert isn't solely by reading documentation, it's by
trying to do the thing, and figuring out what works (and hopefully why). For
software, that often means diving into the source code, as well as the source
code of the environment the code runs in (and sometimes that environment, etc
--- prefer less layers and simpler systems, because it's easy to dive down to
the bottom)

------
ToJans
You become an expert by leveling up in knowledge, let's take a poker game for
example:

    
    
       0: learn the rules
       1: what do I have
       2: what might the others have
       3: what might the others think I have
       4: what might the others think that I think they have...
    

You have to evolve through each level step by step, and develop an intuition
before you can go to the next level... There are different levels of
abstractions in thinking, and experts tend to have been at all levels. To have
the best odds of winning, you need to determine the level of your opponent,
and pay exactly one level higher.

You can find more info on a similar school of thought by googling for "dreyfus
levels of skill acquisition", which explains the 5 levels you have to go
through to master something:

    
    
       0: What are the rules
       1: I know the rules
       2: I understand how the rules work
       3: I understand how the rules work together
       4: I see patterns and develop an instinct
       5: I understand why the rules are there, and would know when to deviate
    

If your mind is no longer preoccupied with thinking about the rules, you can
start doing other things with your brain, which is why practice is so
important.

I actually had a talk a decade ago about this:
[https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/TomJanssens1/getting-
bette...](https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/TomJanssens1/getting-better)

Edit: updated my last poker rule; it has been a while, and I am typing this on
my mobile..

~~~
ToJans
FYI the frustration usually happens between phase 2 & 3 of the dreyfus
model... When you realize that you assumed you were an expert, but you were
wrong... So keep practicing/learning at that tipping point, afterwards it
starts to get interesting... (Similar to the hype curve, "the dip" by Seth
Godin etc..) Edit: typo

------
pessimizer
In my experience, it happens gradually.

1) You have a few successes when a few people (who know each other) ask you to
solve a problem in a particular area. You may have to study and stretch in
order to accomplish those successes, but if the people asking you have far
less previous knowledge of the problems that you solved than you do, solving
the types of questions that they could formulate might be easy.

2) They start calling you an expert between each other, and referring other
people who are solving the same types of problems to you. You study hard to
protect this reputation, to avoid failures that will reflect on the people
talking you up.

3) They make up myths about your genius and spread them, which also fluffs up
their own reputation for knowing you and referring others to you.

4) You start to believe the myths.

So extensive practice motivated by fear of failures which would result in
rejection and looking like a fraud (and possible commensurate loss of income.)
I think you can only get this as a hobbyist if you belong to a hobbyist
community that could also provide that social pressure. That community would
also have to have an element of material output; i.e. something to
differentiate talk from skill, and something that allows you to collaborate
with and advise others.

I think you can become pretty adequate at something by yourself, without
social elements, but not an expert. I don't even think there's such a thing as
an unrecognized expert; that's like an unrecognized genius. Being called an
expert or a genius is just code for being respected.

------
friendlybus
The internal grokking of knowledge is a side effect of forging a path through
life. Can't make expertise an explicit end goal, there's too much to know.

The sharply refined ability to learn, internalize and execute knowledge work
looks like expertise to everyone.

------
cottonseed
It might be useful if you say what you're trying to become an expert in. Ask a
vague question, get a vague answer.

> always come out frustrated

You can't stop there.

Yes, a lot of expert knowledge is locked up in the heads of experts. It is
very hard (if not impossible) to write down all the implicit and explicit
knowledge that experts have, so it doesn't always happen. It's very hard to
become an expert alone. I think this also says something about the nature of
expertise: it is something that is constructed by experts themselves in their
minds. There was a story that a famous mathematician would tell is grad
students, holding up an important book, "You should know everything in this
book ... but don't read it!"

------
jedberg
For me it's all about experience. Finding chances to do something interesting
related to a project. That's basically how I learn anything -- find a useful
project that uses the new thing I want to learn. If I'm lucky, the project is
at work and there are a lot of resources to go big.

In my mind there are two types of expertise: learning something that exists or
making something new.

I've always done the second: find an opportunity to do something new, deep
dive on it and figure it out, and then you are the expert by default. Then
it's just a matter of keeping up on the state of the art while everyone else
starts doing what you're doing but does it better than you.

------
Whitespace
> I've tried the deep dive thing a few times and always come out frustrated.

> Generally as a [hobbyist] ...

It sounds as though you expect that reading or doing something once will
confer expert status. Instead, try to think of it more like a lifestyle.

If you study something every day for ten years — constantly trying out new
ideas to test the limits of the field and your understanding, and teaching
others how to get started to develop a deeper intuition and understanding of
the basics — you will most definitely be an expert at the end of those ten
years.

At no point will you necessarily _feel_ like an expert; that's just a label
people give to those who live/breathe/dream a topic deeply for many years.

------
sharadov
For me this has meant, that you start seeing patterns in things. You almost
develop a strong gut instinct for things, and sometimes it cannot be
rationalized or explained succinctly. This is as it related to traditional
software. In sports ( racquetball), which I've played for 20 yrs now, I'll
make shots where obviously there is no conscious decision making, it's muscle
memory combined with pattern recognition happening in the milli-second range.
It's beautiful and a zen state.

------
csours
Hmm. I wonder if this is more of a perception issue than a skill issue.

At least one person on my work team thinks I'm really smart and amazing, but I
don't feel like I'm an expert in anything I do.

I would say that an expert knows how to put together knowledge in a certain
area of expertise and can quickly judge whether something is plausible and
implausible. An expert can identify problems and potential solutions.

I don't think being frustrated or feeling some level of imposter syndrome
makes you not an expert.

------
quickthrower2
I recommend give this a read it’s quite interesting:
[https://commoncog.com/blog/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-
thing/](https://commoncog.com/blog/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/)

You need to do the thing to gain expertise but also learn it inside out.
Academic + school of life = expert.

Academic can mean formal education, can also mean self taught from books,
papers or talking to other people.

------
BJBBB
Some people do not know that they are subject matter 'experts'; as they
typically have to have respected colleagues state this. My wife and myself are
examples - I have told her for years that there is almost no one else at her
level, but she dismissed my claims until well known (in their fields)
professors started to call her frequently for advice and ideas.

I considered myself competent in some stuff, but never an 'expert'. About 10
years past, peoples in various IEEE societies prodded me to publish stuff and
do talks at some of the respective annual symposiums. I still do not consider
myself an expert - because I do know some actual experts in some of my
professional fields and endeavors, but there are other engineers that do rank
me as such, which I have accepted because it gets me more work.

My wife became an expert by solving some difficult problems. She solved these
seemingly intractable problems by deep observations, knowing what questions to
ask, and knowing whom to ask questions.

I have increased my professional competence by education (both formal and
self-taught) and carefully choosing companies and problems to solve. But I am
too general of a practitioner to be considered an 'expert'.

------
omarshal
I became an expert in a very niche technology and the only thing I did is do
the same for 6 years. For the first project, there was just no one else to do
it, so my company hired an extremely expensive contractor and I collaborated
with him. After that I supported the product and implemented solutions with
the same tool for other lines of business in my company.

After 4 years of doing it, I became probably one of the 10 or even less best
experts in the world with this product but I was really tired of it. The
technology was already outdated but still alive, so before giving up for more
interesting things I became freelance during 2 years and got paid 4 times my
previous salary. It was painful and boring to keep doing the same but it
helped me to pay my house.

I could have extended it for 2 or 3 more years before the technology died for
good, but I was so tired of it that I decided the money was not worth it
anymore and I started again to be an apprentice of the technologies I missed
during the 6 years period of being an expert in a very single thing.

Now I still struggling every day because I've been learning too many things
but I still didn't have the chance of a long term project that helps me become
an expert.

------
nknealk
Two thoughts beyond what’s already been mentioned. Experts tend to have strong
networks of people with similar interests and high intelligence. When they
don’t know how to approach something they know who to ask.

Experts historically tended to write prolifically. They’re known as experts
because others are familiar with their work. The modern equivalent of writing
is more broad but the part about communication of ideas broadly still applies.

~~~
Hokusai
> high intelligence.

Hard work, many hours of trial and error, reading a lot, ... anyone can become
an expert with enough hours.

Sorry, I have meet too many developers that though that they had "High
intelligence" and they were just arrogant incompetents with a little
knowledge. Intelligence is worthless if one does not put the time and effort
to learn and, as you notice, to learn you need to ask question and to listen
to others.

------
cammikebrown
A lot of it is passion. The subject areas I think I am best at are ones that I
care about so much that I can’t help but seek out all the information I can on
them. When I talk to others about said subjects, I usually find that they
don’t care about them nearly as much as I do. There are some things I wish I
were better at but don’t feel motivated in the same way.

~~~
wombatmobile
I think you mean enthusiasm.

Passion is something different. The latter term is often mis-used for the
first, but what you are describing is enduring enthusiasm.

------
yboris
What's interesting is that many people who are considered "experts" are not.
There are places where expertise is challenging/impossible to build up because
there is no quick feedback loop.

A parole officer will not learn much if 4 years after their decision (one of
thousands of decisions they made) they are told it was wrong.

One of my favorite papers: _In Praise Of Epistemic Irresponsibility: How Lazy
And Ignorant Can You Be?_ by Michael A. Bishop

[https://philosophy.fsu.edu/sites/g/files/imported/storage/or...](https://philosophy.fsu.edu/sites/g/files/imported/storage/original/application/b2a33324114ffa3c4d27a09b5fc59ae2.pdf)

------
anonu
> How do people become experts?

Marketing. Most "experts" are also very good at marketing themselves as such.
They may not know much more than their peers in that area - but they are the
go-to because they are visible: either on social media, through their
writings, etc...

I recognize this is a somewhat alternative view point from many of the
responses provided here. I am certainly not downplaying the time and
dedication required to a particular subject matter as a pre-requisite to
becoming an expert. An additional viewpoint that positioning yourself as an
expert in the public eye may also improve your communication and teaching
skills when conveying ideas in that subject matter, thus further reinforcing
your expertise.

------
liveoneggs
[https://www.carnegiehall.org/Explore/Articles/2020/04/10/The...](https://www.carnegiehall.org/Explore/Articles/2020/04/10/The-
Joke)

------
lamby
Hubert L. Dreyfus's "On Internet" contains, amongst many things, one of the
most succinct overviews about how one goes from novice to expert. I highly
recommend reading this short book, especially in this time of online learning:

[https://cryptome.org/2013/01/aaron-swartz/On-the-
Internet.pd...](https://cryptome.org/2013/01/aaron-swartz/On-the-Internet.pdf)
(PDF)

The later chapters on virtual worlds in the second edition have dated a bit,
but before that, it's almost entirely gold, even though it was written so long
ago.

------
_wldu
They do it a lot. That's how they learn. Whether it's fixing cars, writing
programs or installing electrical wires. When you do something a lot. You
quickly become an expert at it.

When you do something a lot and you also study the subject (whether at
university or self-taught) you'll really understand why how you do stuff
matters. Whether it's picking the correct data structure for your program or
deciding what material to use to repair a damaged wall. You'll be a true
expert that people rely on and trust. And, they'll pay for that expertise.

------
DanBC
When you're learning something you don't know what you don't know, which is
why teaching the thing is often said to be a great way to learn more about it.
You need to understand it well enough to be able to simplify it, and you get
asked questions by the person you're teaching that will test your knowledge.

Find Q&A sites that talk about the think you're trying to become expert in and
try to answer as many questions as you can. You don't have to actually answer
the questions -- those sites are often hellscapes.

------
peterwwillis
How do you become an expert? Pick a thing and focus on it intensely. Keep
coming up with questions. The harder it is to find an answer, the closer you
come to being an expert. At the end of your journey, you will still have
questions. When you are one of the few people who can find the answers, you're
the expert.

 _> It seems like the important stuff that differentiates the expert from
someone with casual knowledge isn't documented._

Experience is the biggest driver of expertise, and most people just don't
document the things they find out unless they have to. But often the
information does exist, if it's been around for a while. Ask yourself how the
expert became an expert. What other fields might they have studied? What jobs
might they have had? What similar subjects might reveal some of the details?

 _> Sometimes its not, but the knowledge seems to be locked in the brains of a
few individuals or organizations and can only be unlocked if your'e lucky
enough for them to take you in_

Yep. Working with others is an important part of building expertise. Building
relationships opens up new pathways to find information.

 _> On the other hand, a minority of the experts I know are nearly completely
self taught and I'm struggling to figure out how to manage._

Relax. Expertise is not something you can force, it comes with time. Some
things are easier than others, but if you continue to slowly work at it,
you'll get better.

 _> Generally as a hobbysit Like I said every time I've tried to deep dive I
reach a point where I'm not sure what I'm missing, where to find it._

Not every fish can be found by diving deep. Searching for knowledge is a
normal part of building expertise; don't stress if you're not immediately sure
where to look. If you get stuck, start again from the basics and question your
assumptions. Try thinking about it from both a low-level and high-level view.
Try to change your perspective. You will invariably come up with new places to
search.

As you search, write down questions. If you get stuck on one, start looking
into another. Remember to take breaks and get enough sleep, exercise, good
diet. We learn best when we are stress-free, healthy and happy.

------
codingdave
First, remember the cliche - "There is a difference between 10 years of
experience and one year of experience repeated 10 times."

Becoming an expert is not a one-time effort of studying. It takes time. I like
the cliche above because it not only explains a trap many people fall into of
thinking that doing the same thing multiple times is equivalent to learning,
it also sets an expectation that true expertise takes years, not months.

------
PopeDotNinja
Sticking with something long enough to learn the difference between how it
seems it should work & how it actually works.

------
exdsq
I've heard before that anyone can become an expert at something as long as the
field is suitably narrow enough for them. Pick a topic, deep dive, and get
used to that process. One needn't start by becoming an expert on World War 2,
one can start by becoming an expert of a specific part of a specific battle
and expand.

------
thatcat
The process of finding what your missing is what will make you an expert. PhD
is finding novel information that impacts a field. Try to think of something
at the level that no one else already knows and consider how you might learn
that novel info - read research papers and see how others approach it.

------
techbio
Experts begin with and stick with a process that builds expertise:
reconsidering assumptions, asking questions and examining the answers, keeping
notes and reviewing them, explaining what they learn and teaching others, etc.

Though I do not have the citations, I am sure others here could relate many
examples.

------
jairofloress
There's a direct correlation between learning theoretically (a.k.a. old
fashion reading) and the eureka moment when you KNOW you are an expert in
something. Yes, the experience is crucial, but as Pasteur said "chance favours
the prepared mind".

------
jayavanth
Read Mastery by Robert Greene. For a shorter version, watch the video on it by
Talks at Google

------
Michael_Sieb
Passion + Time = Become an expert!

------
WhompingWindows
Apply your motivated attention to any subject daily for many years and you'll
be an expert. It's not enough to go through motions, either, you need to seek
improvement and growth and overcome your weaknesses and challenges.

------
lukeqsee
Practice. Passion. Stubbornness. Patience. (And a bit of innate skill and
luck.)

Everyone I've known who has mastered something simply has done it a million
times, observed what they did right and wrong, corrected it, and leveled up
each time.

------
atsaloli
Are you getting enough “hands on” practice? Don’t just read about X, but
actually build an X so you can see it, touch it, observe it in operation.
Makes a world of difference.

------
gregjor
Malcolm Gladwell’s book _Outliers_ explores this topic and concludes that lots
of deliberate practice — which includes making mistakes and recognizing them —
leads to expertise and mastery. He says 10,000 hours, but the amount of
practice required varies by person and skill. I don’t think there’s any way
around lots of deliberate practice, though. That much work requires interest,
passion, introspection, diligence, and feedback from mentors.

I don’t think anyone can read their way to expertise. There’s no secret
technique or knowledge hidden behind paywalls.

Rather than thinking about “becoming an expert” reframe it as “mastering a
skill or domain.” No on _is_ an expert, that’s a shorthand to describe someone
who achieved mastery or deep understanding through deliberate practice.

------
cryptica
>> How do people become experts?

By leveraging your academic credentials, legal authority and social
connections to promote an agenda (e.g. corporate agenda) through carefully
crafted lies which intelligent people in your field cannot easily disprove but
which the masses will openly embrace because it aligns with their primal
incentives.

It's about being able to bypass people's logic and reasoning skills and
appealing to their underlying primal instincts; namely their need to feel
safe, to feel accepted, to acquire resources, etc...

The main role of experts is to give people a false sense of certainty and
safety.

------
phenkdo
IMHO, an expert is someone who not only is good at something, but truly enjoys
doing it.

------
benji-york
You might be interested in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert
Performance.

------
egypturnash
1\. Find a thing you are interested in.

2\. Start learning about it and doing stuff with this knowledge.
Intermittently look for new information about this thing.

3\. Keep on working with this thing. Find ways to use it whenever possible,
even if it is not perhaps the most efficient tool for the job at hand.

4\. Make mistakes with this thing. Make some little ones, make big ones.
Whenever you make mistakes try to ask yourself how to make sure you never make
this mistake again. ("Making mistakes" is not a thing you try to do; it is a
thing you _will_ do. They can be small. Or they can be stressful and
complicated and expensive and scarring. An expert will probably have a few of
the latter under their belt, unless they were _very_ lucky and only had a few
really, really close calls.)

5\. Keep working with the thing. Can you figure out a way to get a multi-year
project with the thing going? Do you still fundamentally enjoy working with
the thing when you are at the stage when you can do this - and when you are
finished with that multi-year project, as well? Can you find a way to work
under or with someone who is great with the thing? They'll teach you a lot of
stuff that doesn't make it into books, as well as call your attention to
really fundamental stuff that you've been blowing off like "kid, the way you
hold your tool is gonna fuck your hands up in five years, start doing it
_this_ way if you want to be able to keep doing this for the rest of your
life, here's some exercises to get used to it". (Seriously: I am an artist and
I did not get instructed in How To Properly Hold A Drawing Tool until I was in
the animation industry.)

6\. Hang out somewhere people ask questions about the thing. Answer them.
Answer the heck out of the questions you see allllll the time and are tired of
answering and make key expansion shortcuts for them. Play around with the
rare, interesting questions and answer them in the most novice-friendly way
you can. If you know five ways to solve a novice's question about the thing,
then go into some detail on _all_ of these ways and talk about which one you
would probably reach for if it came up in practice, and about why that's your
choice.

7\. Keep on doing the thing. Lots of little projects? Big long projects? Maybe
both. It's easier to experiment in the little projects but the big ones are
important too.

\----

There is a character in Zelazny's _Chronicles of Amber_ who is The Absolute
Best General And Swordsman In The Entirety Of Reality. He wasn't born that
way. Nobody is. But over many centuries of life, _he studied and practiced
every day_. Every day, for hundreds of years, he spent _some_ time studying
the great battles of old, practicing his swordsmanship, playing wargames,
engaging in actual military campaigns from every level from top to bottom. He
has been doing this longer than _everyone else alive_ , and thus, he is an
expert.

You do not need to go to this extreme. You probably can't unless you turn out
to be an immortal who can hop between alternate realities to see how various
changes effect the ultimate outcome of a huge project over multiple trials.
But _you need to keep coming back to the thing you will become an expert in_.

You can't just do one "deep dive" and become an expert. You have to _live_
with the thing, you have to spend time working with it, time just kicking back
_thinking_ about the thing, you have to spend time catching up on the latest
news about the thing, you have to _internalize_ some of the thing so that the
back of your mind just prompts you with little warnings based on something you
fucked up ten years ago. You have to dive to the bottom and _stay_ there.

And you will need to sacrifice some other shit on the altar of this expertise.
There's only so many hours in the day, and only so many days in your life.

------
oneplane
An expert is someone who knows everything about a subject and can look at it
from beyond the borders of its context. Knowing everything can be read as:
made every possible mistake, or perhaps: re-created the entire concept. Or
maybe even: did an exhaustive search of all the possible avenues of
thinking/applying/using the subject at hand.

It also depends on who you ask. Some people have a different mental model of
the meaning of words or the values attached to them. It can be as simple as:
"the person that I ask stuff from and always has the answer" or as complex as
"this person doesn't just read, repeat or know the theory or know the abstract
theory but is even beyond that".

How do _you_ become an expert? It depends. What do you think an expert should
be? Find that, then find where you are and the gap between that and where you
need to be and start working on it. An expert at walking your own dog has a
different route than say, an expert at silicon substrate doping.

Since we are on Hacker News, we could take being an expert at Linux Device
Drivers as a subject. You'd be able to read and test and expand as much as
you'd like until you become the expert you desire to be. Examples, documents
and sources are all available. It does require base knowledge to build on;
i.e. building software, writing and reading C, the specifics of the kernel,
the specifics of the kernel build system. At some point if you know how to
create and build a module that is a driver, you'd be a beginner and you can
start becoming advanced by perhaps expanding on your knowledge by nibbling at
the borders of the subject; the build system itself, the configuration system,
the hardware underpinnings for drivers. Next you might become interested in
memory maps and CPU architectures. At some point you can understand end-to-end
how a click of a button translates into an event. You'd be advanced. Now take
all of those concepts and things you're reading and the parts you've designed.
That is a single subjects within borders. When you go beyond that, i.e. design
the theories that define it you're an expert. Not only can you build and work
with it, understand its context and modify it at will, but you can re-define
and create it based on your own expert knowledge and abstract theory behind
the concepts and implementations.

You can also make it much smaller than that. I.e. become an expert at folding
t-shirts. Still means you need to know about folding, fabrics, speed vs.
quality, quantity vs. quality (are you folding t-shirts for yourself or for a
warehouse? is it manual or automated?). Once you know how to define what
folding means and how it is affected and how it affects its context (i.e. what
happens to the fibers? and what if it's dirty, or new? or when it has been
washed 10 times? what about 100?) you could pretty much call yourself a
t-shirt folding expert. This is still big, but a lot smaller than a software
example.

