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If you have 10,000 hours of practice in a particular software package or platform, congratulations, you are an expert at something that was obsolete five years ago. This is something that makes software development both a frustrating field and an interesting one. I always feel like I'm learning, but never feel I've really mastered anything.

I'm glad you brought up the point about software architecture because it's something I constantly find myself explaining: the difference between good architecture that survives many many generations and forms of code re-use vs. code monkey output that is fit only for that individual programmer's or his client's one-time use. This is an especially important point to bring up when you encounter business people who wonder why we can't just outsource everything. Cheaply-outsourced code is too often the drudge code monkey output we would find deplorable.

> It takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become good at something,

No, it takes that long to master something, it takes much less time to simply become good.

>Disagree. I don't think 95-98% of programmers are idiots.

I didn't say that.

> It takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become good at something,

People need to stop re-hashing this. 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is likely but not necessarily going to make you an excellent programmer. I know plenty of programmers in their 40s and older who have that much time in or more that are frankly, garbage.

Investing time is necessary, but insufficient, and there is no one grand unified number that defines all professions for what is necessary to become excellent for every individual.

I know a 60-something whose code output terrifies me and he has a great deal more than 10,000 hours invested in programming.

OTOH, one of the programmers I most deeply respect is a 50-year old woman.

It's hit or miss. In my experience, passion counts more than anything.

>but that's not because our industry is has 20+ idiots for every decently smart person.

Work at a major insurance/something-not-directly-related-to-software company. That's an optimistic ratio.

Wait a minute, are you talking about people who spent 10,000 hours really trying to get better at their craft, and not just doing their work? It's like natural languages, where you can be immersed 20 years in a country and talk no better than you did 2 months after your arrival.

You're No-True-Scotsman'ing a subject/concept that was dead on arrival.

Stop pretending the 10,000 hours thing is a "real thing" or somehow fact.

It's not. Fucking stop it. It's the fantasy of a bad writer who makes up shit based on pure anecdote.

And to use your own bullshit against you, he never said it was deliberate practice in the book, he explicitly used the example of the Beatles, whose "10,000 hours" was them jamming in public and fiddling around privately, not hammering at chord progressions.

The 10,000 hours meme is bullshit. Stop propagating it.

The 10,000 hours meme (if it is that, it seems more of an observation to me) is not to be taken literal.

If you take it literal, then yes, it is nonsense, it is not that until the 9999th hour you are going to be bad at something and then suddenly, boom magic.

What it means - and what I've found to be very true - is that to get better at something you need to put in time and you need to practice your trade.

Nobody is born a 'great programmer', sure there are some differences in talent but I've seen guys go from bad to mediocre to good to excellent just by applying their trade and learning their lessons. Some of the kids I taught a decade ago that were struggling with basic concepts now run circles around me. That's proof enough to me that there is some truth in the 10,000 hour rule.

You can disagree with the writer all you want but in practice he does seem to have a point.

And for all your aggressive use of language you so far do not seem to have one. If you want to show that something is not true you have to provide counterexamples, not simply jump up and down using foul language telling people to stop.

People need to stop re-hashing this. 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is likely but not necessarily going to make you an excellent programmer. I know plenty of programmers in their 40s and older who have that much time in or more that are frankly, garbage.

Sure. And I could spend 10,000 hours playing basketball and I'd never become good at it. I don't have the genes. The point about "10,000 hours" is not that anyone can become good. It's that this is the amount of time that it takes for a person with sufficient talent (which is uncommon but not outstandingly rare, as it might seem) to become great at something.

Also, 10,000 hours of inadequate or badly-structured practice is useless. Otherwise, five years of work would be enough, and for most people, it's not. Most of the things that software developers do for money don't make them better programmers and therefore don't count.

It's hit or miss. In my experience, passion counts more than anything.

I agree. Passion, creativity, and courage are all important. It takes all three to figure out how to divert 10,000 hours away from what you're "supposed to do" and toward what will actually teach you something.

The 10,000 hours meme is something a bad author made up to fit his pile of anecdotes.

It's not a fact, it's a number he pulled out of his ass.

He never made it about deliberate practice, he used the Beatles jamming and fucking around for 10,000 hours as an example.

Stop talking about 10,000 hours IT'S BULLSHIT. You might was replace-string it with "SIX-SIGMA CERTIFICATION", it means nothing!

He used The Beatles travelling to Germany and having to perform for severl hours every night for months as the turning point between them being a band and them being a good band.

He didn't say they were "jamming and fucking around", or anything of the sort. He also didn't say "chord progressions is the only practise that counts", to reply to your other comment.

He also also didn't say "10,000 hours is a fact, 9,999 hours won't do", it's an anecdote fitting rule of thumb to tell a story.

But if you can find plenty of people who are world class at what they do, and haven't done anything close to 10,000 hours of doing it, have at it.

The point about 10,000 hours is that anyone can become good.

The point of Outliers, the Gladwell book, is to dismiss the idea that talent exists at all. "A person with sufficient talent", as you say, is a person who started onto decent amounts of practise at a young age, such that by the time the world notices them at age 8, 10 or 14, they're already surprisingly good and can make good use of professional coaching.