Comment by cJ0th | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cJ0th | Hacker News Reader

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Maybe it's just me who after years at uni is sick of viewing everything from this impoverished academic point of view but I think these statements are not helpful at all. People worship advice/knowledge these days and totally forget about the doing.

The statement does not deny that actually doing stuff is important - "work steadily". However, these are just empty words to someone who tries to become a genius by hitting the books first.

My advice (yes, I do see the irony here) in this age would be to postpone seeking advice or reading about a topic as long as possible. As a result, your common sense sharpens and you may even come up with fresh, creative ideas that others perhaps didn't have.

  > postpone seeking advice or reading about
  > a topic as long as possible

Oh gosh, the number of inefficient solutions, horrible architectures, brain-dead encryption systems I saw, because of the people who did not bother to open a book.

To come up with creative solutions you need to have a base for said creativity. I.e. to connect the dots in original way you need to have the dots already.

I have nor proof, but I suspect that the number of useful solutions created by people who know nothing about the field is close to zero.

Somehow I doubt one would see much further when instead of climbing onto the shoulders of giants they prefer to stay in the pit of their own ignorance.

> Oh gosh, the number of inefficient solutions, horrible architectures, brain-dead encryption systems I saw, because of the people who did not bother to open a book.

If you hadn't come across horrible architectures you would have learned less about good ones. It would be nice if this all happened inside of one person, that's what the parent is suggesting.

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