Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

ESR often comes across as unbearably pompous and self-important, but here he strikes a very constructive posture of hard-earned humility and even tough love.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense... I never ever studied anything before sophomore year of college. And then when faced with serious large-scale programming problems, and 300 level math, I realized I don't know how to study. It was definitely a struggle, but I'm glad it happened to me early, and not when I entered a "real world".

Here is the post in the context of the original thread <a href="http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0240.html" rel="nofollow">http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0240.h...</a>. There doesn't seem to be a reply from Linus.

I think it's worth saying that it's not just that gifted people don't need to learn study skills to get through school. They can be actively prevented from learning them by being forced to focus on a curriculum for which they don't need them. Denying gifted people the opportunity to take on real challenges while they are still at school when their mistakes are not too critical, which happens all too often, is worse than not recognizing their gifts, it is actively denying them the opportunity that others are given.

You guys are all talking about the burden and challenge of being gifted, but really, being gifted is awesome. I would much rather be gifted than not be. And if you are truly gifted, and not just talented with a tendency for the grandiose, you can rise above this challenge too, and become wise as well as gifted (after the necessary trials that any worthy endeavor entail, of course). It can happen, despite the happy mythos espoused here by our dear friend ESR. I am skeptical of cursing any specific group of people, unless the point is that every person or "type of person" has a curse that must be borne. If so, being gifted is hardly one of the worst. "Oh noes, I must deal with my constant state of amazingness! How will I cope!"<p>Others must deal with you though I suppose. That must be rough for them.

I'm so very lucky that a) I just happened to major in math and CS, not just CS and b) my 'giftedness' was only enough through calc 1 in the math program. My foreign language and gen eds were easy, and the CS program didn't expect much of us, but I had to actually <i>try</i> in the higher-level applied math classes. Without that, I'd have been in for a rude awakening when it came time to work for real, and it would have cost me much more than re-taking calc 2 did.

I didn't get what this <i>sharing code</i> was about until I read the earlier post: <a href="http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0201.html" rel="nofollow">http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0008.2/0201.h...</a><p>I think this is a typical engineering argument and its got nothing to do with curse of gifted etc. If you share code and they divert later on, even if to a small degree, it gets harder and harder to maintain them. That's what linus says, and I do think that <i>is</i> simpler. Linus (and a good engineer) always favors the simpler solution. The more gifted, the more simpler. So ESR is just arguing the other way around.<p>I see this all the time in hot lkml discussions. It's often the more gifted who <i>sees</i> <i>through</i> to the simpler solution, but others can't. Don't know if it is true for all gifted, but definitely for the best software engineers.

Anybody have good advice for a first year university student who slept through most of high-school, got good grades, and then failed his first calculus exam because he was reading "Practical common lisp", instead of studying? How do i learn to study if i find the subject boring? How do i get disciplined? I know a lot of you have been here, how did you handle it?

Edit the title to include the year (2000) ?<p>-----<p>The overall point is solid. Many times, the "gifted" have sufficient brain capacity to be able to track or process fairly complex problems. As such, they see no need for the sort of support structures and habits others use to solve the same problems. Therefore, they don't develop those things in the "natural" way, piece by piece. Instead, they finally run up against a problem too big for their brain, and have to develop those habits all of a sudden.<p>For some people, that's an obstacle they never overcome. For others, once they realize the problem, they're quick to get advice, research solutions, and develop those structures. I hope this letter served its purpose by giving Linus the motivation and information he needed to overcome the curse of the gifted.

"Your tendency to undervalue modularization and code-sharing is one symptom [of the curse]. Another is your refusal to use systematic version-control or release-engineering practices. To you, these things seem mostly like overhead and a way of needlessly complicating your life."<p>I'd say he came around on version control with git - five+ years later.

Dang. I should have submitted <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1167649" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1167649</a> rather than just including the link in a reply that got ignored.

Just the dose of practicality that my senior year at university needed. Makes me feel I can actually accomplish something with the right mix of communication, tools and team.

This is a very helpful post. How often do we run into people who are headstrong, and probably even right when we disagree with them, but who ultimately will benefit from a slightly more humble and careful way of working.<p>Clean coding is as much about the social skill of communicating in code as about the raw ability to hold the problem in your own head.

While I hesitate to call myself gifted I can recognize some of that. I never really studied in high school, the only homework I ever did was hand ins. University came as a bit of a shock really, and taliking to friends, I know I'm not alone in this. I really wish they had done a bit more to prepare us for higher education, and I suspect dropout rates would go down if they did.

I think it would be useful if you put the year [2000] in brackets after the title. For some reason I read the e-mail thinking it was contemporary!

the more gifted you are, the more you can get away with. but that doesn't mean you <i>should</i> be taking the easy path.