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Comment by thewarrior | Hacker News Reader

"Bill Gates: No. I think after the first three or four years, it's pretty cast in concrete whether you're a good programmer or not. After a few more years, you may know more about managing large projects and personalities, but after three or four years, it's clear what you're going to be. There's no one at Microsoft who was just kind of mediocre for a couple of years, and then just out of the blue started optimizing everything in sight. I can talk to somebody about a program that he's written and know right away whether he's really a good programmer." http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-become-a-better-programm....

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This is in the context of programmers-who-have-already-been-hired-at-microsoft. And possibly speaks to a lack of training/mentoring. Edit: and something Gates said 20 years ago.

Learning new things makes you a better programmer, always. My first four years, I was a copy/paste programmer. Then I turned 11 and learned algebra. Huge leap forward. Another huge leap forward with trigonometry and calculus. Again when I had access to a library with books that weren't older than me. Another when I finally met other programmers, studied FP and learned half a dozen real languages. Another with statistics, differential equations and linear algebra. And so forth.

The ascent only ever stops if you are employed at a company that has a culture of overwork and no mentoring. But if Gates believed people can't grow, then (true to the headline) he probably made it a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Some people can never be good singers, because they're tone deaf. Or mute. Blind people, with perhaps a few exceptional, uh, exceptions, can never be good basketball players. People with exceptionally low can never be programmers.

On the other side are the virtuoso's. People who not just through training, but innate ability are at the top of their field.

The rest of us are somewhere in between.

It strikes me as downright ridiculous that there's an infinite ascent to becoming a better programmer, considering that it's trivial to think of examples of people who cannot even master the basics.

I think anecdata in this case doesn't quite cut it.

That said, I very much applaud the sentiment of your message, as I think a lot of people err on the side of thinking that they are innately incapable while diligent practice and learning might get them quite far.

But that doesn't change the, in my opinion, completely sensible observation that some people are just not cut out to be great programmers. Programming is difficult!

I think Bill Gates is not saying people can't improve their programming chops, but instead that innate talent cannot be taught or learned.

From a different perspective - all pro-level athletes got to where they are today with a lot of training. But only a tiny fraction of the global population, if put through the same training regimen, could achieve that pro status.

That's what you call a fixed mindset :) .

"There's no one at Microsoft who was just kind of mediocre for a couple of years, and then just out of the blue started optimizing everything in sight."

That's a fixed mindset if there ever was one. He's saying its extremely improbable for someone to go from mediocre to super skilled.

This mentality is what causes tech companies to all adopt the myopic "We only hire 'A' players" hiring policy. I totally disagree with this. With the right coaching, feedback, and practice, B players can definitely become A players. I've seen it happen over and over throughout my career. Gates is usually right about this kind of stuff but I can't agree with this one.

It also completely ignores that programmers may appear to be mediocre because of environmental factors beyond their control. Casting this to the general case, people do not have absolute control over the conditions in which they need to succeed, and may fail despite taking every optimal action for their situation.

> Gates is usually right about this kind of stuff but I can't agree with this one.

Context: He said this in 1986.

What super interesting about this is that it could be that you'll spot the people with a growth mindset over a few years, while those with a fixed mindset will be the ones not growing. So what Gates may have been doing all along is weeding out the fixed mindset people.

That can't be true, unless you also want to claim people are born with ability to program or not.

What you are saying is that people can't learn period. Which is not true. 3-4 years is not enough time to master anything, but 10 years might be:

http://norvig.com/21-days.html

Dude it's not my opinion :P.

fixed link: http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-become-a-better-programm...

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