I hate the framing of problems or domains as hard, since it kept me from pursuing them further for many years. And the years later when I tried my hand at those problems, I found that it wasn't nearly as hard as it was being made out to be.
Historically many problems have also been hard until people figure them out, and then they stop being considered hard problems. In recent years this has been mostly true of AI-related topics.
A lot of people have achieved mastery over really hard problems and synthesized their learnings over countless hours, making the information much more easily accessible for future generations.
If you keep hearing someone talk about how some field is hard you should take that as an opportunity to challenge yourself rather than shy away from it. One field that has recently interested me is organic chemistry, which I'm interested in learning mostly because of how many people I've heard talking about how it's so challenging. May I find a worthy opponent.
Edit: This is relevant to HN when talking about C and C++. People talk about these languages as if they're some magical beasts, but in reality you can get really far with them by treating it as a serious endeavor. People will talk about how they don't have full mastery over the language, but you don't need anything close to that in order to be effective. If you know how to program in other languages you can pick up C++ just as easily and start being effective very quickly. No mastery required. It's not that hard.
I hate the framing of problems and domains as hard because I found it so confusing when they turned out to be easy for me. It gave me a false sense of competence and superiority. Because I found calculus (and everything else in school people said was hard) easy, I thought I was just exceptionally capable and other people were incompetent and/or stupid.
I didn't find out until much later (and it still feels like much too late) that I just had an aptitude for learning the subjects traditionally taught in schools in the ways schools normally teach them. I got lucky. Everybody else was just as capable at learning some things in some ways as I was at learning school things in school ways. They just didn't have the luck that their aptitude lined up with what was measured and lauded in childhood like I did.
That meant they all got to learn how to work hard to learn things outside their areas of aptitude in school. I didn't. I didn't realize there were any such things that might matter someday.
I think learning how to learn things that are hard FOR YOU is quite possibly the most important skill in life. The sooner you master it, the better.
Framing some things as "hard" when everything is hard for some people and easy for other people undercuts the more important lesson.
> I think learning how to learn things that are hard FOR YOU is quite possibly the most important skill in life.
I’d certainly agree it’s extremely valuable. There are some failure modes from taking it too far (like anything).
People tend to be happier when they’re very good at things. You also contribute more to the world. If you’re always doing things that are hard for you, you won’t do as much or as well, really by definition. It’s okay to do things that are easy for you. There are a lot of upsides!
Even if you choose an easy path, there will always be hard parts. So if you want to get anywhere, it’s essential to have practice navigating that. Just consider if that’s where you want to be all the time. I’ve done it myself and seen it in others, where you think you’re always challenging yourself, but you’ve actually just put yourself into a life that’s a bad fit.
I agree that it wouldn't be a good idea to spend your life focused on things that are hard for you, but since, as you said, there will be hard parts no matter what you do, learning how to learn the things that are hard is the critical skill.
You don't really have to learn how to learn things that are easy for you. That's what gets them classified as "easy." But you'll never accomplish anything unless you learn how to work through those inevitable hard parts, and the sooner you can learn that, the better.
Ah, the trap of the gifted student! When everything other students find somehow hard is easy for you, you get a delusion that nothing is hard, and that putting in some effort is not necessary. A rude awakening may come at high school, or at college. Those who kept toiling just keep toiling, and overtake you, because.you're not used to pushing through.
I think it's important to learn early enough that things are usually hard when you get far enough into them, and that it's OK, it's not a brick wall, it just takes some effort to keep advancing.
This extends into life as well. I play golf (for fun [2]), which cunningly has a scoring system that tells me I'm objectively rubbish, and getting (mostly) worse.
I've found this professionally useful in combating the seductive idea that "because I'm -really- good at one thing, I'm good at everything. "
I've seen the opposite in customers sometimes. Doctors who are very good doctors, have strong feelings about UI (that are objectively just wrong[1].) But because they operate in a culture which treats their word as law, they find it hard to accept that others may have skills in other areas they lack.
If you are an expert in something I recommend including something else in your life to keep you humble. That humility allows you to be a better spouse, parent, and human being. (And ironically a better expert who's able to recognise and adopt an idea or solution that'd better than yours even in your area of expertise.)
We choose to do these these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
[1] think yellow comic sans italic text on blue background levels of wrong.
[2] golf is fun precisely because it is hard. Things that are easy are not fun. The pleasure of 1 perfect shot out of 100 tries is the dopamine that keeps us coming back.
I've found that one of the best ways to dismantle an overblown ego is to play StarCraft (Brood War or SC2, the result will be the same) or really any other 1v1 game. The direct feeling of being beaten, potentially overrun completely, time and time again, especially after putting in hard work is very humbling.
Fighting games are very good for this except they've always invited a certain mental block in people where they'll declare certain things "cheap" and end up offloading a lot of the humbling experience and not take it to heart. This type of scrub mentality exists everywhere but in fighting games it seems to come extra easy to people, perhaps because they have too many potential things they can blame (tier of their character, match-up supposedly being bad, etc.).
> I've found that one of the best ways to dismantle an overblown ego is to play StarCraft (Brood War or SC2, the result will be the same) or really any other 1v1 game.
Sadly no. Playing SC2 online weaned me off online competitive games. Because of all the kids calling me a stupid noob ... when I won. The ones beating me were polite.
Golf might be better because its me against me. No excuses about the other guys ability. But sure, as long as you find your fun, and your humility, it doesn't really matter where it is.
I console myself by believing that Tiger Woods is pretty bad at CSS :)
I was always told that at the next level of school, I would finally meet a challenge. I got through a master's degree without its happening, and unfortunately that just drove the initial point deeper, that I was somehow fundamentally different from other people rather than just very luckily in an environment exceptionally well-suited to my aptitude (even though the rest of the world is not).
For me, being able to do hard things is not something I learned as a kid. It’s a sum of:
- ADHD symptoms being mild,
- Having slept well (ties in with former point), and
- Having no imminent major worries at the moment (family/health/financial).
Any of these can make the difference between casually trying to understand quantum mechanics, and crawling under the table because I just can’t make this one rectangle on the screen do what I want.
I've seen the enthusiasm for any subject wither away when a child or teen is told a particular subject is hard, whether that be math, a programming language, or learning a musical instrument. I was this way. In their totality, yes, the subject is hard. But what they aren't taught about any difficult subject matter is that they are achievable by breaking them up into a series of small, easier to understand concepts. Their practical utility grows as the number of these small steps are achieved. And as they are achieved, mini demonstrations of their use should be performed so the student understands the importance and gets exited to continue.
Example 1: "I learned five notes in shape 1 of the minor pentatonic scale. That took a bit of practice, but now I'm able to play a bunch of cool licks. Neat! If I continue this path, who knows what other cool licks I can pull off!".
Example 2: "I learned how to import libraries. My lesson had me register a twillio account. I imported the twillio library into my python script. And I copied some code that'll instruct the library to send me a text message. I don't quite understand these python concepts, but wow, this is really cool; I just got a text message from my computer program. The fact that libraries can give me abilities like these is neat. I can already imagine how I can build some basic automation to leverage them. Who knows what else I can accomplish if I discover more libraries and understand python better to actually build something automated!"
Rightly on Wrongly some areas of study have the reputation/stigma of being difficult attached to them.
Back when I was a high school student math (not just calculus - but the entire subject of mathematics) had this reputation as being a "hard" subject as a result scores of my fellow students just decided math is to difficult I'm not going to engage with this.
I suspect this is related to a fear of failure or kids being afraid of "looking dumb" in front of their friends - There was a definite "if I don't try then it doesn't matter if I can't do it." attitude, so they just switched off in those particular classes.
A lot of these attitudes carry forward into adulthood. I'm almost 40 and amongst my generation programming has a similar reputation. People I grew up with think if you can read or write code you are some kind of mystical wizard with powers beyond the understanding of mere mortals.
I see it today at my day job - I work as an engineer (the non software kind). I've seen my coworkers completely baulk at computer code I hear all the same things I heard back in high school. "This is too hard, I can't learn this stuff, I'm not going to bother attempting to understand it".
Fluid Dynamics was a hard subject (in my opinion), Solid Mechanics was challenging a dozen lines of python code is not on the same level.
> math (not just calculus - but the entire subject of mathematics) had this reputation as being a "hard" subject
To me it seems like a lot of the fault was with the curriculum: basically full steam ahead regardless of the class’ understanding. That’s especially bad in math when each chapter uses what the previous taught.
But the point about adult salaried professionals complaining that they supposedly can’t figure something out is disappointingly relatable. I generally believe that most people are "smart" and just don’t tend to bother using their brain as a muscle and that seems to make it doubly irritating to hear such complaints.
> People will talk about how they don't have full mastery over the language, but you don't need anything close to that in order to be effective.
My daily work is 80% C# and 20% Python (to make internal Blender tools for our artists). And I'm really bad at Python. I don't know any of itertools. I don't know zip() besides its name. I don't even use lambda.
The result? My bad code can be easily understood by some of more tech-savvy artists.
for x,y in zip(['a', 'b', 'c'], ['1', '2', '3']):
print(x + y)
>>'a1'
>>'b2'
>>'c3'
Usually you just use it to group two items you're iterating through that are the same length. You CAN do items of different lengths but then when one gets used up the rest of the other get tossed IIRC. Can use it in list comprehensions as well of course.
Zip was simpler than I thought when I first saw it.
> I hate the framing of problems or domains as hard
The easiness or difficulty of a domain or discipline is always in relation to some individual context; and that context includes variables that the learner controls. To the impatient, disinterested or undisciplined, I imagine calculus, learning the kanji, or playing the oboe all seem hard. But to the extent I can marshal patience, curiosity and discipline, the difficult domain becomes just a series of small steps integrated over time. I’m a musician and when a student complains about how hard a piece is, I ask if they can play the first note, then the second. If so, then it’s not hard. Because the process to acquire the whole thing is right there. Yes there are interpretive elements and techniques to be acquired along the way. But nothing is hard unless you are in a great hurry or you don’t really want to do the thing.
> The easiness or difficulty of a domain or discipline is always in relation to some individual context; and that context includes variables that the learner controls
> But nothing is hard unless you are in a great hurry or you don’t really want to do the thing.
I got told this many, many times in my life, and it was incredibly frustrating when it was something I really wanted to do. I discovered after 34 years that I have ADHD, which makes a lot of stuff that can eventually become easy/easier with patience and perseverance to in practice be extremely hard.
I'm bringing this up because a lifetime of guilt and shame for not being able to accomplish something when it was deemed easy, that it "just requires some discipline", said by someone else pushed me away from a lot of things I'm interested in but wasn't able to keep motivated to do them after shame set in. It can spiral if you feel inadequate, and if you live with this you feel inadequate and "catching up" a lot of times.
Specifically, one of those things was music. I tried learning instruments when I was younger but the motivation was not in learning the instrument itself, it was music as a whole. I wanted to understand how it worked and how I could create it, not plow through guitar strumming exercises for months and months, then fingering techniques, then be able to play a few songs, and maybe in some years actually start to create something. To me what worked, in my natural branching way of thinking/learning, was to start producing electronic music some 4 years ago. Just some stupidly cacophonic basic loops in the beginning, which pushed my interest to learn the basics of music theory, learning the basics cleared to me a map I could guide myself through skills I was missing: rhythms, harmony, active listening, etc. After I started understanding what skills I needed to achieve what I wanted then it pushed my motivation to learn an instrument, the piano, and then learning the mechanical skills of the instrument made sense.
I bring this up because since I was diagnosed I had multiple conversations with people that suffered through the same as myself: being called undisciplined, inpatient, disinterested when they couldn't muster the motivation to plow through a structured path when it got boring to them. And that is not under my control, ADHD is much more about lacking motivation control than being hyperactive or actually having an "attention deficit", I get obsessed by things I'm interested in (music is an example), it's just that most of the resources to educate oneself on a discipline/domain is not tailored for people who needs to branch out, find pockets of skills that are interesting and motivating to learn, and putting the puzzle back together after acquiring some skills in a haphazard way than the usual structured learning path.
It is useful to use the words hard and easy. As you mention, changing perspective around these concepts is the crux.
Hard problems or domains are unknowns. Working towards solving hard problems involves thinking through unknowns, which may or may not lead to understanding. An aversion to hard problems is an aversion to the unknown.
Historically many problems have also been hard until people figure them out, and then they stop being considered hard problems. In recent years this has been mostly true of AI-related topics.
A lot of people have achieved mastery over really hard problems and synthesized their learnings over countless hours, making the information much more easily accessible for future generations.
If you keep hearing someone talk about how some field is hard you should take that as an opportunity to challenge yourself rather than shy away from it. One field that has recently interested me is organic chemistry, which I'm interested in learning mostly because of how many people I've heard talking about how it's so challenging. May I find a worthy opponent.
Edit: This is relevant to HN when talking about C and C++. People talk about these languages as if they're some magical beasts, but in reality you can get really far with them by treating it as a serious endeavor. People will talk about how they don't have full mastery over the language, but you don't need anything close to that in order to be effective. If you know how to program in other languages you can pick up C++ just as easily and start being effective very quickly. No mastery required. It's not that hard.