
Ask HN: Why do many people assume there's no such thing as programming talent? - RecursiveLogic
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&#x27;s exactly what&#x27;s being assumed when people say there&#x27;s no &quot;talent&quot; involved. Or am I missing something and there&#x27;s actually no such thing? Wouldn&#x27;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?<p>Isn&#x27;t it rather logical to assume that we all didn&#x27;t take care of ourselves as good as possibly others either due to laziness or unfortunate environmental factors? And if that&#x27;s the case, isn&#x27;t it logical that that too would have a role in the development of our brains, our ultimate potential as to how &quot;plastic&quot; our brains could be, among other factors? We see immediate differences in people being born with different heights, doesn&#x27;t it make sense to assume not all brains are created and raised equally?<p>Just wanted to see what everyone&#x27;s thought was on this since I practically never see this side of the argument when it comes to topics like &quot;programming talent&quot; and such.
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dalke
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](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-...](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/february/talking-to-
baby-021213.html) ). 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.

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kasey_junk
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.

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mrcold
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
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](http://code.org) .

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pliny
Who says that?

Who are 'many people'?

How do they substantiate that assumption?

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bbcbasic
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.

