
Curse Of The Gifted (2000) - luu
http://www.vanadac.com/~dajhorn/novelties/ESR%20-%20Curse%20Of%20The%20Gifted.html
======
austenallred
I am miles away from Eric or Linus, but the "curse of the gifted" is very
real.

Thankfully I wasn't smart or gifted enough that I could ride it for long, but
when it comes to math and problem-solving I rode it well into my high school
years. I never learned to do algebra "by the book," because I didn't need to.
Or maybe because I wasn't smart enough to.

The math teacher would teach "3x + 6 = 9." Basic algebraic problem-solving
says you subtract the 6 from both sides, then divide by 3. So "3x = 3" then "x
= 1." Easy. But I learned pretty early on that I could do it in my head. It
was a little bit challenging, but then I wouldn't have to waste the time of
writing it out, and I wasn't handicapped like all of those suckers who had to
go through the motions no matter how simple the problem was. If the teacher
wrote "x + 1 = 6" I didn't have to subtract 1 from each side, I just thought
about it logically and knew the answer. Of course, the math got more complex,
but I was good enough at doing it in my head that, at least for a long time,
it never really mattered.

I thought it was because I just "got" math, and the other kids were on a lower
level. But as the math grew in complexity, I fell behind. By the time we
reached Calculus I was still doing most of it in my head, as I had never
_really_ learned to write it out on paper. And the complexity of the math
outgrew my capacity to visualize. I showed up to my AP calculus test without a
calculator, partially because I was forgetful and partly for fun, and it
wasn't until I got my score back (a failing 2 of 5) that it finally hit me: I
was actually behind. In school. I was cocky enough that this was a slap in the
face.

I had to start from scratch, and I'm still not sure if I've made up for a lot
of that. I ended up in more creative fields, mostly because I felt inferior to
those who had learned the rules and not been cocky douchebags like I had been
in the beginning.

This really sucks to write. I frequently wonder what could have been.

~~~
ChuckMcM
We home schooled our kids prior to high school and one of the more interesting
challenges was this 'doing the steps' part. My eldest was very much like you,
look at the problem, tell you the answer. Which was 99% of the time correct,
and 1% of the time wrong. She was really annoyed that we focused on that 1%
but eventually we got to the point where by writing down all the steps you
could then see where in your thinking you had been mislead. The trick was
differentiating between "doing math" versus "learning math." (and the nice
thing about math at this level is that if you get all the steps right you
cannot help but get the right answer). Once we got past the big fight about
"always showing your work" not being a 'for all time, forever' edict but
instead for a 'these problems while you are learning' edict, it became
possible to do math in this ponderous way, but only when learning and only
when training our minds on the steps and alerting ourselves to the places we
were likely to make mistakes.

~~~
renovaatio
I was (and still am in many ways) this undisciplined kid. I never learned the
value of a good work ethic, of effort.

One of the most important thing I want to teach my 4 months old son, is the
value of effort.

I am glad you shared your experience, I will keep it as one of the many tools
I am gathering so that I can be able to teach what I haven't learned to my
children.

------
nswanberg
For those curious about the context:
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/23/97](https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/23/97)

Note that noone replied to Eric and the thread continued on. Also go back and
read some of Linus's posts before this. Eric writes using vague
generalizations about age and experience; Linus writes with specifics about
his experience with the kernel. The former style makes for popularly read
posts but the latter seems much more effective.

Also, compare this message from Linus earlier in that thread
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/22/52](https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/22/52) with
a post of his from yesterday:
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/2/10/575](https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/2/10/575),
especially regarding abstraction.

~~~
georgiecasey
i had to scroll down this far to find people who actually read the link.
everybody above just wants to tell us how much of a curse their high
intelligence is.

~~~
_Adam
I wonder if they want to use their experience with the "curse" as proof of
their intelligence? I'm sure anyone here could find some example of it. But I
can think of way better things to do than talk about being smart on HN.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
I modded you up for your accursed intelligence or giftedness :-)

It ought to be called the curse of the lazy until you bring Linus or someone
else gifted into it.

------
callmevlad
It's weird to see Linus on the other side of being disciplined, and a pretty
stark contrast to his own slightly more abrasive style.

For example:
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75](https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75)

~~~
Cakez0r
I don't understand why people allow themselves to be spoken to like that!
Incredicle...

~~~
marvin
Holy shit. I would _never_ work with someone who addressed me like that after
I asked an honest question. It's a wonder that there are enough competent
people working on Linux who are willing to put up with this. Getting a message
like this _once_ would lead to a personal e-mail or in-person conversation
explaining that this is in no way an acceptable way to communicate with me,
followed by a prompt beeline for the exit if it occurred again.

I knew that stuff like this goes on in mailing lists; I've grown up in the
computer culture. But seeing this as an adult, after learning some people
skills and how interpersonal communication works, it's really shocking what to
see kind of destructive tone prevails in some prominent tech circles.

~~~
pdonis
_an honest question_

But it wasn't "an honest question"; that's the point. It would have been an
honest question for you or me, but you and me are not Linux kernel hackers.
(At least, I'm not, and I assume you're not.)

 _Getting a message like this once would lead to a personal e-mail or in-
person conversation explaining that this is in no way an acceptable way to
communicate with me, followed by a prompt beeline for the exit if it occurred
again._

And I expect Linus would be absolutely fine with that, because if you were
unable to understand why he was so emphatic about the point he was making, he
wouldn't want you hacking on the kernel anyway.

The key thing to recognize is that Linus treats the kernel as what you might
call "mission critical" software. Think of it as like, say, the operating code
for the Space Shuttle. If someone came along and changed the operating code
for the Space Shuttle so that, say, the program that fired the retro-rockets
stopped working, and when asked about it, their response was, "well, that
looks like a bug in the retro-rocket program", you would not want that person
doing that job. And since the retro-rocket code is mission critical, just
saying, "no, that's not a good idea" might not get the point across
emphatically enough. You might have to use strong language to make sure it is
100 percent understood that breaking the retro-rocket code is _unacceptable_.
In a situation like that, you do not want to leave _any_ room for
misinterpretation.

Also, if you look at Linus' posts, you'll notice that he does not _always_ use
that strong language. He only uses it when, in his view, it's warranted--
meaning, when someone has done something that is _so_ wrong that just saying
"that's wrong" won't get the point across strongly enough. That's why we have
strong language: for those (hopefully very rare) occasions when no less strong
language will do justice to the situation. There are certainly plenty of
people in our culture who abuse such language; but looking at Linus' posts as
a whole, I'm not sure he's one of them.

~~~
marvin
It's perfectly possible to get an important point across without being an
asshole, and it's really an indication of the social dysfunction that some
hackers are unable to. Maybe that's what working with code and little in-
person human contact for decades does to you.

I've seen the same tone from crypto hackers, also under the guise of writing
"mission critical" software. It's not an excuse. You don't see airline pilots
or doctors yelling at each other for making the occaional honest mistake,
which happens in every field and can with the correct routines be caught
before it causes any damage.

~~~
pdonis
_You don 't see airline pilots or doctors yelling at each other for making the
occaional honest mistake_

You're right, you don't. But my point was that you also don't see Linus
yelling at other kernel hackers for making honest mistakes. The mistake he
yelled at someone for in the case under discussion was _not_ honest; it was a
mistake nobody qualified to hack on the kernel should have made in the first
place.

------
OldSchool
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this curse's endgame: getting a typical
corporate job.

Everything about it is against your nature: fixed schedule, dictated product
and process, micro management and arbitrary accountability compared to the
creative freedom of your life when delivering academic performance on a
timescale of weeks or months was your only responsibility. Worse still, it's
not an "X year work program," it's designed to be endless.

Not that an entrepreneurial career is for everyone, but if you can be dumb
enough to try and smart enough to make it work at a sustainable scale, it sure
beats a guaranteed slow corporate death.

~~~
socrates1998
This is so true.

I hated my life for years because I knew if I could have just been more
disciplined, then I would have been free from all the horrible, mind numbing,
soul crushing stuff I had to do at my corporate job.

It took me years to finally leap into self-employment.

~~~
BlackDeath3
>It took me years to finally leap into self-employment.

What do you do? How did you start?

~~~
socrates1998
I was a teacher for a few years, so I transitioned that into a tutoring
company and I am doing some freelance web design as well.

------
ArkyBeagle
This is really how to fix this:

[http://carymillsap.blogspot.com/2011/01/axiomatic-
approach-t...](http://carymillsap.blogspot.com/2011/01/axiomatic-approach-to-
algebra-and-other.html)

I was an undergrad with Cary, and he got A's, I got B's with the odd C and
this is exactly why. Until I took the Discrete Math course ( w/ the Eggers
book - which is fantastic ) , I was floundering. I knew what the rules were,
roughly, but I didn't _KNOW_ know them.

I'm not name-dropping Cary. It's just a coincidence, but I googled him and
found the essay. I bring up the "we were undergrads" thing because it's a
nearly perfect natural experiment.

Use one of the Algebra sections in junior high or high school to _teach
rigor_. There are _no moves in a solution_ unless you _name the principle by
which the move was made_.

I know it seems impossible to implement, but there can't be a better time than
8th or 9th grade to do this. You get exposure to rigor for the kids that
aren't pointed at STEM, the kids that _are_ will actually be prepared - win-
win. If we have to hire ringers as math teachers - people outside the
education industrial complex - so be it. Whatever it takes.

~~~
revelation
That seems like a positively annoying and pointless thing (see the line where
they eventually just start referencing them by number; it's become just
another 'thing to do').

Not the value of teaching math through axioms and deriving everything you do
from them! That's very useful and proper preparation for higher math.

But just because I can express everything in propositional logic with just
NAND, I don't do that. Just as I would prove the mean-value theorem once and
then simply invoke it when appropriate, I define conjunction, disjunction,
negation etc. once and move on with the world. _This_ is the lecture you are
trying to teach, after all: you can deconstruct the universe into very simple
blocks.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Just to reinforce things: we _are_ talking about kids very early in their math
career. And math _is_ drill; Khan academy, all that. It's an investment.

You can do drill in 8th grade, or you can do it in your freshman year of
college.

The point is:

1) I thought it annoying and pointless in the 8th grade. Oh clever me, I knew
so much better.

2) People who sucked it up and did it, with whom I shared classes, blew my
doors off in college math courses for a couple of years. A teacher made this
the central fact of the algebra class _they_ took.

3) Then I took the discrete math course, and stopped having trouble.

There is something to this. Rigor is not natural. Learning rigor is essential
to being able to operate your life well.

------
sp332
Soon after this exchange, Linus started using a real source management system
(BitKeeper, followed by git) for the kernel.

~~~
bronsoja
I'm assuming there was at least some scm in place before, but my few google
searches haven't turned up what it was. Do you know?

*edit: Didn't look hard enough, according to this: [http://git-scm.com/book/en/Getting-Started-A-Short-History-o...](http://git-scm.com/book/en/Getting-Started-A-Short-History-of-Git) it was just files and patches from 1991-2002. Seems crazy from a modern perspective...

~~~
sp332
Yeah, check this out from 1998 (two years before OP)
[https://lkml.org/lkml/1998/9/30/122](https://lkml.org/lkml/1998/9/30/122)

~~~
cshimmin
Wait is this where the original idea for git came from?

~~~
sp332
Larry McVoy was the BitKeeper guy. This was early in terms of distributed
version control, but I have no idea if it was the first or just (for a while)
the most popular. Linus wrote git using several lessons he learned from using
BitKeeper. It's not just a copy, though.

------
alecco
I think, in context, Linus was probably right. There are some situations where
having 2 very different project/modules depend on common code could be hell.
Just remember the multiple WebKit debacles or the BSDs. It might be better to
keep an eye on each other, pick the specific updates, but have total
independency. Else, you end up in commit wars and endless arguing on mailing
lists.

ESR is way overrated, IMHO.

~~~
nousernamesleft
>Just remember the multiple WebKit debacles or the BSDs

I don't know anything about webkits, but how are "the BSDs" relevant?

~~~
alecco
They split off a common codebase, but they share a lot of code and patches fly
across the multiple codebases without major problem. What takes the most
effort is porting across big new features. But that is expected.

~~~
nousernamesleft
Oh, it read as though you were giving them as an example of problems.

------
adriancooney
This is so inadvertently affectionate. It's like a grandparent trying to calm
down their overconfident, arrogant child. So eloquent.

As a side note, I can't even imagine how Torvalds worked with others without
source control. That sounds like absolute hell.

~~~
grandalf
except for the part where he mentions that they all gossip behind Linus' back.

~~~
mathattack
That's actually good grandfatherly advice too. It's worth knowing when people
are talking behind your back.

~~~
grandalf
pointing it out in a public forum?

~~~
mathattack
Sure - why not? It is generally best to shed as much light as possible on
gossip.

~~~
grandalf
> It is generally best to shed as much light as possible on gossip.

Do you say that as benevolent moralist or is it your personal preference that
any gossip concerning you be addressed at you before an audience?

~~~
mathattack
More the latter, though the former holds true too. I'd rather people say
things to my face before going behind my back. Organizations where there is
more private than public communications tend to be very disfunctional.

~~~
grandalf
fair enough. I suppose your view is a form of radical honesty. In my
observations, it takes a particularly mature person to take public shaming in
stride, and I tend not to credit most people with that level of maturity.

~~~
mathattack
There are degrees in how harsh and public you should shame.

If as a manager, I allow people to frequently complain about their peers with
the other people absent, it sets up a terrible precedent. As manager I would
become the bottleneck as people focus their energy on politics rather than
problem solving.

It's not black and white, but how you lean.

------
redthrowaway
(2000)

Not that it isn't relevant, but it _is_ 14 years old and the title should
probably reflect that.

~~~
logicallee
yeah seriously this might have been the suggestion that led to bitkeeper that
led to git.

Which Linus invented and coded up essentially to solve some of the problems
brought up here

Which (git) today arguably has done more for programming groups than all the
new languages and frameworks of the past fourteen years combined.

So, it is interesting. But mostly interesting because of how massive Git
spawned from it.

~~~
icambron
s/bitbucket/bitkeeper

~~~
shawkinaw
/

------
mathattack
There are now lots of articles suggesting praising people for effort rather
than intelligence. Seems like Raymond was ahead of the curve.

2 examples of many:

[1]
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9862693/P...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9862693/Praise-
childrens-effort-not-their-intelligence.html)

[2] [http://consumer.healthday.com/kids-health-
information-23/chi...](http://consumer.healthday.com/kids-health-
information-23/child-development-news-124/praising-kids-for-efforts-not-
qualities-may-help-them-succeed-673377.html)

~~~
darkandbrooding
"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full
of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The
slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human
race."

Calvin Coolidge 30th president of US (1872 - 1933)

~~~
mathattack
I've read a lot of quotes like this, but I used to wonder, "Is this just
people downplaying all the other things that led to their success, like family
money?" It's interesting that modern psychology is providing some proof as to
why these quotes are true.

------
jtchang
Anyone explain what "splitting a driver" in kernel parlance and code sharing
is? Modularization is just breaking large pieces of the program up into small
pieces right? Is code sharing just the same thing or are they talking about
something different?

~~~
lukecampbell
I believe in this case that the driver existed as one piece or module and each
hardware version was handled as a different case in branch logic in an attempt
to keep the code consolidated and modular (code sharing). As the hardware
matured and new versions came to be it gets harder to reuse existing code and
that's the context of this thread.

Linus wants to split the driver and create a new module to house that handles
only that specific flavor of hardware instead of adding new edge-cases to the
existing code.

At least, that's how I read it. I wasn't working on the Kernel back in 2000 so
I can't say.

------
kevingadd
Nothing's quite as destructive as being told over and over that you're a
natural at something so it'll be easy for you. It's a shame that well-meaning
parents and mentors will sometimes undermine someone's potential by
discouraging them from learning necessary skills.

~~~
JimboOmega
Except assuming that if you did a bad job at something, it's because you were
lazy.

The message I got growing up was that "you're so smart, but so lazy". This was
principally because of my terrible fine motor coordination combined with my
intellect.

So I'd try to do some sort of "posterboard" or "project" and it'd look like a
slapped together mess no matter how hard I tried. My handwriting was often
illegible to me, even when I tried to write very slow.

ADHD was also an issue, but the fact that every project I poured so much
effort into was derided as lazy... yet I could ace every test... told me that
effort wasn't, well, worth putting in.

~~~
josh-wrale
I bet you're left-handed like me.

~~~
JimboOmega
No, actually. But I suffered nearly as badly as most. I think it almost took
legal intervention to stop them trying to force cursive on me.

Being allowed to type assignments - in the early 90s - was one of the greatest
things that ever happened to me.

Then again, I met other problems caused by my terrible organizational skills
in creative ways. For instance, I ran a webserver that had had a folder that
pointed to where I did all my assignments. When I inevitably forgot to print
something... there it was.

Still. My experience, especially prior to high school (and prior to ADHD
medication, now that I think about it) was completely dominated by working my
ass off and being told that I wasn't trying at all.

------
paul
If Linus always did things the "right" way he wouldn't have invented git (or
Linux). Sometimes, it's important to be obstinate.

~~~
adamnemecek
You are missing the point.

~~~
paul
I'm making a different point.

------
wellpast
This is what Alan Kay means when he says, "IQ is a lead weight." [1]

Also see Rich Hicky's talk "Simple Made Easy." [2] In which he suggests that
nobody's _that_ smart; you will always hit a brick wall without the tools to
manage complexity. "A juggler can juggle 3 balls. A really good juggler can
juggle 9. But no juggler can juggle 90 or 900 (paraphrased)."

[1] [http://www.tele-task.de/archive/video/flash/14029/](http://www.tele-
task.de/archive/video/flash/14029/) [2]
[http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-
Easy](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy)

------
ChristianMarks
At least no one can accuse ESR of coasting on his native gift of bloviation.
The man perfected his blowhard style more than 10,000 hours before that "it
takes one to know one" email. (Which is why it's irritating when he's right.)

------
TacticalCoder
"Another is your refusal to use systematic version-control or release-
engineering practices."

And then Linus went on to use Git. I'm not a native english speaker so I may
be wrong on this one but I feel like there's quite some irony there: Linus got
criticized for not properly using version control and... A few years later he
went on to write the most succesful version control system ever!

The same person created both Git and Linux ffs! ESR was probably right: Linus
is the 2nd coming of Ken ^ ^

~~~
mcv
That's not irony, that's simply someone listening and changing his mind. That
is a normal and healthy thing to do.

------
chacham15
Interestingly enough:

"He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great. Failure is the
test of greatness."

-Herman Melville

~~~
sabbatic13
This is quite true.

The best thing I ever did to preserve and improve my brain was find things,
really hard things, about which I was passionate. It's not so much about
studying as it is about finding subjects and venues of learning that just kick
your ass. If you don't have the experience of getting your intellectual butt
kicked, and if you don't have the ability to learn from the experience, you
can only grow so much.

The easy stuff shouldn't be avoided; you should just expect yourself to pick
it up as necessary. If you are not getting challenged, if you don't encounter
people who are way ahead of you in some subjects, then you are doing it wrong.
The feedback is key. Getting stopped in your tracks, just when you thought you
were running along at a good clip is invaluable.

Not that I ever achieved greatness, and I do sometimes ask myself why, even in
my private life, I always pick the really hard to study (and have for decades
now). I'm sure masochism is involved, but the good stuff is just hard, and you
have to be willing to be someone's idiot some of the time to learn.

~~~
selimthegrim
And in grad school, you can salt this with wondering where your next meal is
coming from and camping out under your office desk!

~~~
sabbatic13
Ah yes, I jumped into a PhD program after the college experience. That's a
great butt-kicking too, because suddenly you are responsible for justifying
anything and everything you might say or write about something.

At least I learned how to live on far less than 20K a year. I mean, it was the
90's, and it was in new Jersey, but that still wasn't a fortune (and I had a
bad book buying habit).

------
fretfulfood
Why is everyone here so self-bashing about how you should've seen this
earlier?

The solution is to make the gifted people working on something that _is_
challenging to them. You can't expect gifted people to work on annoyingly
simple problems in school, yet still develop discipline. If you want them to
develop discipline, give them hard problems, that will require discipline of
them.

I see this as a failure of the education system, not the gifted people.

Or, put another way, you can't blame Linus for not having discipline if he
never needed it. It's the educational system's fault for not showing him he
will need it.

------
mattgreenrocks
This should be required reading for any developer, if only to hopefully
instill the belief that you will eventually reach a problem that you cannot
lean on pure ability alone to solve.

~~~
varelse
Fortunately, one frequently transitions to management and/or dies before this
happens because one's career is finite.

Linux and other such runaway success stories are true Black Swans and Linus's
subsequent embrace of source code control IMO demonstrates you can teach new
tricks to old dogs.

~~~
derekp7
I don't remember that Linus was against source control -- it's just that none
of the solutions at the time really fit the methodology that the Kernel was
developed under. That was his main argument.

And actually, there was source control all along. Every version of the kernel
was a separate tarball sitting on many ftp servers, and there was a patch /
set of patches to bring it to the next version. It just wasn't a database-
backed automated version control system.

------
nether
I'm not gifted, I'm actually pretty dumb. Can anyone help a stupid normal
person relate to this article?

~~~
lawtguy
Lots of good explanations in this thread, but I'll add my own:

I'd call it the trap of the gifted, rather than the curse. That trap has three
prongs:

1) Gifted people get concepts right away, almost effortlessly.

2) Because it's so easy for them, they never have to work at learning. It just
happens for them.

3) Being so good at something earns praise from their teachers, parents,
friends, etc. This often becomes central to their self-esteem.

This is fine until the day when their giftedness alone simply doesn't cut it.
It could be in high school, or college, or graduate school or maybe even at
some point in their professional career. But eventually it stops being easy
and this is usually a very traumatic event.

Because of the three prongs of the trap, the gifted person finds themselves in
a very hard situation. First, they are not used to frustration because
previously they got everything right away. Second, they have no persistence
because they've never had to work hard. Third, they become anxious and afraid
and possibly even become depressed because they are no longer "smart" (at
least by their own definition).

Being gifted isn't a curse or a trap in and of itself, but it can lead to a
certain kinds of bad habits. Schools and parents tend not to do a very good
job correcting these bad habits, which can lead to big problems.

~~~
danieltillett
This is the best written post in this whole thread. a+

------
twoodfin
Here's the full thread by way of Google Groups:

[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/fa.linux.kernel/uhah96NhtAA/...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/fa.linux.kernel/uhah96NhtAA/gDzjQXVRj0sJ)

~~~
LukeShu
And on lkml.org:
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/23/97](https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/23/97)

------
bane
_edit_ a little stream of consciousness follows

Curse of being gifted is _very_ real. I wonder sometimes how many people
couldn't break out of it and have ended up in bad jobs, or worse.

Probably like many HNers I also suffered from it mightily in K-12 and by the
time I realized what was going on, I was already so far behind that escaping
school, rather than redoing years of what I missed, was the easier option.

It took me a few years of milling around before I finally got my head together
the right way and turned my life around into something productive.

One thing that still comes up to this day for me is a profound sense of
isolation and loneliness. It's hard to relate to people because the kinds of
problems most people have seem trivially simple to me and are not the kinds of
problems I have and the kinds of things people want to talk about are not of
interest to me. I try to stay intellectually engaged by turning the issue into
one of how to communicate with people who aren't as quick as I? Adult
education, how people learn, are a small hobby of mine. I even did a short
stint as a teacher.

I'm consumed with relationships with mapping out the other person's cognitive
limitations and patterns and trying to work within and around those. This is
not a good habit, but I find I end up doing it with most everybody. The people
I tend to keep around me are those that I haven't been able to conclusively do
this with. I guess they keep me interested? I'm rarely surprised by people.

I remember I mentioned this to an associate one time. He asked me if I had
done this with him. I answered yes. He challenged me to prove it. I went down
a list of his cognitive biases, how they fed into his decision making process,
and how this created a pattern of where I could even start inventorying what I
thought he had in his apartment (I'd never been to his apartment). I missed
the color of his couch, but guessed correctly where he bought his furniture,
what kind of car he drove and was likely to buy and why, what TV shows he
watched, what music he listened to (and had listened to in the past), the
clothes he did and didn't have in his closet, what kind of food he liked and
where he liked to shop, I picked his neighborhood, choice of home computer,
where he wanted to retire and even a handful of books he probably had in his
home library. I think it hurt him, or his sense of individuality, to be
deconstructed like that. It was the last time I ever did this to another
person. On the flip side, he tries to mix his life up, make random vectors in
his life now and not be so predictable. But I know also that he does it
because of what I did. It's just another behavior to slot into his patterns.

Relating to people impacts me in many ways, from coming up with product ideas
to finding a mentor, to the closeness of friends. It's tough, I have very few
close friends but I hold onto them fiercely. With most people I interact with
I feel like we're simply in a status of mutual understanding and shared
purpose, but not friendship. Maybe out for some laughs and a good time, but
that's it.

I got very lucky and found a wife who's smarter than me, and she keeps me on
my toes and from drawing the world down into my brain and further isolating
myself with walls of internally consistent, but bad ideas. I've never figured
out how to predict her thinking process beyond some high level abstract
patterns. I think she does it on purpose, to keep me appreciative of her.

Not having a mentor has probably been the hardest. I feel like I have nobody
helping me find my path most of the time and have to literally carve a path in
the universe for myself. My parents were simply not equipped to deal with a
kid like me at all and made many mistakes over the years. From moving to the
country (thinking the quiet would help me grow, when it just isolated me more)
to schooling choices, etc. School didn't know how to handle me and in business
I've found woefully few people I look up to.

I yearn for a simpler life, but realize I couldn't live that life for long, I
would quickly lose interest. I start to crave novelty and surprise. New things
are interesting to me. But I've also found that once I start to understand the
pattern of newness in something, an entire field will start to bore me.

Actually most of the life skills I have I learned from my school's music
program. How to break a problem down, how to communicate with people of
various levels, how to tutor and teach, how to lead a group and present,
setting and keeping schedules etc. Most of my adult years have been spent
trying to adapt these skills from orchestra into the rest of my life, while
most people would have learned them in more context appropriate ways.

But I guess I turned out okay. I do not look back on most of my childhood with
much fondness, I do look back on it with a great deal of sadness and regret
and wish I could redo it all. I found out a few years ago that my mother had
saved all of my report cards growing up, lovingly stored in a scrapbook. When
I found out she had done this, in a fit of anger, resentment and deep
embarrassment I tore them up and threw them away.

There's no solution, it just is this way. I live a very fulfilling life that I
enjoy and I try to minimize regrets and find joy. I think I'm on a path
towards simplifying my life, but I have a notion that I'll find a more minimal
life dreadful and boring after a few months.

I _do_ seek out others who I sense have a similar story, but I find that none
of us ever really build close bonds with each other. We exist more in a group
of mutual acknowledgment than in friendship. I'm drawn towards groups that
promise an intelligent gathering, but I'm frequently disappointed by what I
find once I get there.

My mother once asked me why so many smart kids end up in drugs and drink, I
responded that, at least for me, it slows the thinking down and clarifies the
thoughts. It's like having an engine in your car that's always at full rev,
and then finally taking your foot off the accelerator for a bit. It also lets
the emotions flow a bit easier, the ones that we have to keep bottled up
during the day, the slow accumulation of small frustrations from dealing with
people who I can't relate to. It's like a sore I can pop and let the puss flow
out for a bit.

It's hard staying positive, not falling into hopelessness and depression. I've
had very close scares a couple times where I thought about disengaging from
everything and ending it. Feeling like you're in the wrong world all the time
is maddening. I found a way to continue on, and it works for me. But that
endless well of despair still sits there, but it's like I'm walking around the
edge of it, like walking around the edge of a swimming pool, trying to make
sure I don't fall or jump in.

~~~
jakobe
> the kinds of problems most people have seem trivially simple to me

This sounds a bit narcissistic. If you think other people's problems are
trivial, maybe you're just not being empathic enough to understand their full
scope.

If everything looks like it follows simple patterns, maybe you just aren't
looking close enough.

When you learn something new, there's often this point where you feel you
understand it all. If you're a quick learner, you will reach this point
quickly. But things only seem simple because you don't understand them fully
yet. You have to continue learning, specialising, looking at the details, and
only then will you learn that the subject isn't quite as simple as you
thought.

You get bored when you figure out what kind of car someone has, or what color
their furniture has. You think you have them all figured out. But if you
continue talking to these shallow people, you might see there's something
beyond these superficial details.

~~~
bane
> This sounds a bit narcissistic.

I know. That's the trouble with talking about growing up or being highly
intelligent, you end up sounding like a narcissistic prick.

Even saying something like "I've tested in the top 1-2% of dozens of aptitude
and intelligence tests" sounds like I'm lording it over those who haven't. But
I don't think it's really all that different than saying "I'm taller than 99%
of the population". Except tall people, or people with some other exceptional
attribute can get together and commiserate about their exceptional attribute
without the kinds of social stigma attached to it that intelligence does.

It's very hard to have an honest discussion about being smart without diving
into lots of euphemisms and using lots of humbling verbiage.

Most people's problems _are_ simple. They just don't want to fix them because
the emotional cost for them is high. So they endlessly try to find ways to
solve their problems with the minimum of emotional impact and they make no
progress. Getting past your own emotions to make forward progress with your
life is the best skill almost anybody can make with respect to solving the
problems in their life.

It's not easy, and I don't mean to minimize the impact emotions have. It was
definitely a difficult skill for me to learn (and I'm still learning it).

But take money, every single person's money problem is solved with the very
simple "don't spend more than you earn". Yet there are literally hundreds of
thousands of pages written on financial advice and dealing with personal debt.
We _think_ it's a complicate topic, and we treat it like it is, but it's not.

I've found that most problems people deal with are similar.

I'm pretty overweight, and when I think it's a problem, I come up with all
kinds of excuses about it and how to solve it and endlessly mill about not
doing anything. But it's hilariously simple for me to solve: exercise more,
eat less. But I struggle with it like many people struggle with money or
relationships or whatever.

~~~
gamerdonkey
> _I know. That 's the trouble with talking about growing up or being highly
> intelligent, you end up sounding like a narcissistic prick._

You've framed this incorrectly. The reason you ended up sounding like a
narcissistic prick is because you were being a narcissistic prick. Perhaps you
were just reducing his point to something a little too trivially simple.

There's nothing wrong with saying things like "I've tested in the top 1-2% of
dozens of aptitude and intelligence tests". That doesn't sound narcissistic.
Making the unsubstantiated claim that you are so smart that the problems of
'normal' people are trivially simple to solve and shall be disregarded is
narcissistic. Especially when, once called out on that claim, you respond with
an example fit perfectly to your honestly very narrow solution and cover every
other scenario with an aloof "well, some problems do get complex".

Honestly, it sounds like jakobe was dead on. If the world seems so simple to
you, you're probably not looking close enough. If you really are so good at
coming up with solutions to the problems of the world, I hope you're spending
your time improving it for yourself and those around you in truly substantial
ways.

~~~
bane
I didn't say every problem was simple, just that most problems most people
struggle with are. I also didn't say every problem has a simple solution. You
read too much into it.

> If the world seems so simple to you, you're probably not looking close
> enough.

Funny, the closer I look, the more locally simple everything seems. It's how
we learn, how we work and how we simply do things. Take things that are too
big to do and break them down until they're simple enough to do. You can't
move a mountain all at once, but you can move it if you blow it up into truck
sized pieces.

There's nothing in the world that a person does that's more complex than what
a person can do.

If the world seems complex too you, maybe you should just look more closely?

> If you really are so good at coming up with solutions to the problems of the
> world, I hope you're spending your time improving it for yourself and those
> around you in truly substantial ways.

I hope I am too. With great power comes great responsibility, no? I'm
definitely not working on the next photo sharing app if that's your
implication.

------
joehillen
Linus' signature is shockingly relevant these days:

"...The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment
doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a
'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't
say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb.
The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search
and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist.
The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any
circumstances." \-- Harry Browne, 1996 USA presidential candidate, Libertarian
Party

~~~
greenyoda
That was Eric Raymond's signature, not Linus'.

------
mathattack
I wish I saw the response.

That said, the "curse of the gifted" manifests itself in a lot of ways. One
problem is also that "less gifted" see the "gifted" and say, "If they don't
have to be disciplined, why do I?"

~~~
logicallee
>I wish I saw the response.

You did. Git.

~~~
selimthegrim
I salute your pun there.

------
kingkong
Linus's issue on "shared code means less bugs"
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/22/12](https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/22/12)

------
yason
I'm cursed with the gift of being slightly better than most in nearly all
things but not at all stellar in any single one. I never learned to study in
school because I've always learned things on my own.

This has carried me far but my limits are always there, always visible, at 360
degrees. Meeting and seeing stellar people is a good reminder of that.

The converse point is related to _dealing with whatever talent_ you have. The
essence is to learn to _keep yourself in the unconfidence and doubt_ as for
your skills even if so many people around you don't seem to "get" what's
obvious to you.

If you think too highly of yourself even if the evidence seems to be on your
side, the reality _will bite back_. And that makes you go back and shut a part
of yourself down, and you're in a position that worse than where you started.

For example, in programming the only way to handle your skills is to assume
the role of a beginner and expect the existing code to be right for a reason
that you don't understand yet. If it turns out to be blindly obvious that the
original author had no idea what he was doing and a partial rewrite is not
only in place but unavoidable, only then accept it as there are no other
options left.

The trap is seeing too much of that and starting to hallucinate that thanks to
your talents you can "just know" and short-circuit right through the way of
doubt. No you can't.

As a talented person you need to remain humble and only exercise your skills
and vision when there are no other choices left. That will keep your ego in
shape.

------
incision
So true.

The benefit of recognizing this isn't just avoiding that crunch at the limits
of your talents - it's learning to the use the tools, processes and people
which will allow your talents to flow most efficiently every day.

The classic example of this for me has been engineers who resist
documentation, project management and delegation as if each is wasting away
their valuable productive time when it's _exactly_ the opposite.

------
jokoon
Indeed, success is only potential times ability to work with other people.

I still wonder what sort of company or business environment Linus works in.

Nobody would have heard of general relativity if einstein would not have been
let working in his labs for long hours.

Often you'll have a very skilled technician and you will have to give him more
space to achieve more work than other, but at some point, you still have to
make this person work a little with others to make this one guy's contribution
more valuable.

Apart from that, I still believe we don't give enough chance to introvert
types so that they can channel their work and prove their worth. Linux is a
success mostly because Linus managed to channel his talent, but there are many
untold stories nobody will remember about a talented guy that just gave up
trying. I'm still siding with Linus because the system tend to not work
properly for talented people in general. I'm sure he must have some sort of
anger and frustration issue, and that mail somehow shows it.

------
refurb
I always wondered what the difference was between being really smart or just
being really interested in a subject.

All through high school I never studied for a science (biology, chemistry and
physics) exam. I would often work by myself and complete several weeks of
study in a few days. I would read college levels books in 10th grade, just
because it was interesting. Teachers would force me to go back to my locker to
get my textbooks before an exam because I needed to study; I just put them
back when they weren't looking. I didn't study for 12th grade standardized
science tests and ended up with scores 95%+. (I also thought English class was
stupid and typically got mid-70s by squeeking by).

That being said I am certainly NOT gifted and to be honest I don't think I'm
that extraordinarily smart; I just find that if I'm interested in something,
the effort I put in seems, well, effortless.

------
PythonicAlpha
Eric is plainly right.

I once heard of a developer that wanted to make programming more interesting
to himself, by using just three names for all his variables. They where
banana, apple and another fruit. He used only those names. I am not sure what
he did, when he needed more than three, but that was what he did.

It might have made the thing more interesting for him, but made the things far
more difficult for us others of the "pack".

Software development is about complexity. To manage complexity is the highest
form of software development and the real challenge. Not the clever ideas, the
talented implementation -- manage complexity can make your project, even your
company succeed or fall.

~~~
mattfenwick
From reading some of the other message in the thread, I think Linus makes a
well-reasoned argument -- so I disagree that "Eric is plainly right".

Clearly I don't know all the context, and so I am not really sure what Eric is
responding (in addition to the previous message), but it seems to me that
Linus has solid technical reasons for his argument. He's even trying to avoid
clever ideas of favor of simple code.

------
morganherlocker
> Another is your refusal to use systematic version-control

Pretty hilarious reading this now, considering his contributions to version
control in the past several years. I am not too familiar with all of the
backstory, but Linus' creation of git seems like one of the most extreme cases
of "Not Invented Here Syndrome" since... well Linux itself (half-joking).

I certainly won't complain when someone gets so frustrated with the current
tool-o-the-week that they go out an build something superior.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Warning to the unexpecting, this was written by Eric S. Raymond.

~~~
BlackDeath3
I get that the guy is inflammatory, but what is the problem with letting the
content stand on its own?

But if you _are_ going to mention that ESR is involved, you may as well
mention that Linus is present as well.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Torvalds is abrasive, but Raymond is just an asshole supreme, and if I had
known this was an ESR post I wouldn't have opened it in the first place.

~~~
BlackDeath3
So you really didn't get anything out of the post because ESR wrote it?

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I got a bunch of hot air and puffery and blah blah blah out of it, which is
about as good at you can get from an Eric Raymond post.

------
loladesoto
it is a real problem and two things make it worse: 1) ego 2) lack of
mentorship.

ego urges you to walk into situations wearing nothing but arrogance. (and why
wouldn't you? you've been praised since you were a kid for your precocity. by
adults!). and while you may have earned some of that praise, it's like your
granny chanting your invincibility into your ear. it's a delusion that
prevents you from asking questions (acquiring wisdom) and exploring your outer
limits (acquiring experience).

with mentoring, that arrogance could be channelled into something else:
humility. because it's really impossible to be alert to truth--academic or
otherwise--when you think you know all of the things.

it's just that the educational system doesn't really know what to do with
academically-gifted kids who have a bit of rebellion/arrogance in them. and
there aren't enough teachers or mentors who recognize this variant even among
the gifted.

so they're released into the wild, not having acquired the one thing they
needed possibly more than an education: humility.

------
babesh
The underlying ideas for even simple math are deep. Just because you get As
doesn't mean that you grok concepts deeply. Examples: place notation, rational
and irrational numbers, axiom, proof, correspondence, logic, countability,
etc... The formulations of these ideas were intellectual breakthroughs
thousands of years ago. It's takes curiosity to explore these more deeply.

------
ajarmst
Shit. An ESR ego dump. Head for the shelters.

~~~
eitland
No, I just read it and like many other things ESR said it is well thought out,
friendly and helpful.

Please note how ESR again and again ranks Linus (the second coming of Ken)
higher than himself (old fart) while still trying to convey som hard won
experience.

~~~
SamuelMulder
ESR is being extremely condescending and patronizing. I don't consider that
friendly or helpful. He's giving tons of hand-wavy pop psychology in response
to a technical issue on which he's out of his depth. His "experience" was not
with anything the size and complexity of the Linux kernel and was not
particularly relevant. He does like to set himself up as the wise old mentor
to people who don't really want or need to listen.

------
Orangeair
Oh, how I wish someone had told me this when I was fourteen. As a matter of
fact, someone probably did, and I just ignored it. Public school isn't exactly
challenging, and it's hard to believe that a problem could possibly be beyond
your ability to intuitively grasp it when you never see actual evidence of
that fact.

------
everyone
Working on an OS is an enormous job where teamwork, good communication,
planning and so on are paramount. I am the only game coder for a small adver-
game company. The projects are small and I have total control, so I will never
hit that wall and have to do all that boring stuff :) (One of the reasons I
chose such a job)

------
frodopwns
I don't compare to Linus but I think I was hit by this bug.

I cruised through high school without trying and actually made it through
undergrad the same way. Now however I am faced with the prospect of relearning
a lot of it if I want to move forward. That or be a run of the mill web dev
for the rest of my life.

------
lutorm
Obligatory reference to Carol Dweck's research:

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-secret-to-
rais...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-secret-to-raising-
smart-kids/)

~~~
MarkTee
Non-paywall version:

[http://www.ccsf.edu/Campuses/Downtown/scientific_american.pd...](http://www.ccsf.edu/Campuses/Downtown/scientific_american.pdf)

------
scotty79
14 years later Linus seems to be doing pretty ok. The git and all considered.

------
code_duck
That describes me pretty well. I thought I was going to get by in every field
because of my raw talent. It turns out that you actually have to be organized
and achieve things, however.

------
wisevehicle
For more about 'The Curse of the Gifted' see:

Mindset: by Carol S. Dweck.

Anecdotes aren't data, but I can say that having this 'curse' has been a huge
challenge in my programming career.

------
beat
Whoa, flashback. I think I read that on Slashdot back in the day.

------
eklavya
Wow, I can feel better about myself because now I have another alibi/theory
for my shortcomings and under achievements :P ;)

------
S4M
Is the reply of Torvalds online somewhere?

~~~
SwellJoe
Someone else mentioned that ESR got no reply, and the thread continued on
another path. So, Linus did not reply, it seems. But, he did begin using
revision control soon after; though I think that's likely to have happened,
anyway.

~~~
S4M
Yeah, I saw that comment and started to read the thread. It's interesting that
Linus's talk is very concrete while ESR is rather abstract.

------
CmonDev
Isn't lack of ability to modularize a sign of lack of another kind of gift?
Gifts come in different traits.

------
popee
Gift of the cursed? >:-)

------
auggierose
Nice nugget.

