Comment by TimGebhardt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TimGebhardt | Hacker News Reader

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Fake it 'til you make it. Throw yourself at problems that you think are over your head. If you care and you want to do good work you'll figure out a way to get something done. Especially if you have a good mentor or someone that can guide you to answers to hard questions or take you under their wing.

Learn to effectively communicate and then communicate with your peers. You'll never know what you don't know unless you discover it (and there are only so many hours in a day), or you learn from other people. And you'll have an easier time trying to articulate your visions when you can communicate them effectively.

Don't worry about how good other people are. In fact, it's good to surround yourself with people that are more talented than you are, because it's easier to learn from them. Try to surround yourself with people smarter than you are. This is a lot easier if you contribute heavily to OSS or work in a product-focused group or company. It's pretty easy to let your skill set stagnate if your primary responsibilities are writing internal-use-only software.

Are you sure "fake it til you make it" is the correct term for this idea? I'm familiar with the term, but usually in a different context.

Regardless, you're spot on.

My silly anecdote: Back in university I used to play pick-up two's volleyball a couple nights a week. At the other end of that same gym, the school team would practice, occasionally overlapping with the pick-up folks.

One day, their practice broke up around the same time as a game of sixes ended, so me & my partner wandered down and challenged a couple of the Team guys to a game of twos. It was quite memorable. 15-1, if I recall, and really not even that close. Pretty humbling, since we could certainly hang against anybody else we'd played up to that point.

But we stuck at it. Over the next couple months, we'd ask for games off those guys from time to time. 15-4. 15-8. 15-7. Then one day we lost 15-12. Fifteen to Twelve. Against a guy with a four foot vertical leap and a guy with one of those crazy olympic jump serves. Guys who were having their tuition paid for playing this sport. Wow.

And it's not like we went back and proceeded to dominate from there on out. Sure, we were better, but not that much better. We were better when we were playing better players. We were only playing that well because we were playing up to their level. It was quite a thing to see.

I've seen this same thing again and again over the years, particularly with Rock Climbing, where a group of people can attack a boulder problem that's way over any one of their abilities, and eventually get not just one guy over the top, but everybody, because of the group energy.

I can't see why it wouldn't be the same with programming.

If you're interested in anecdotes about this, consider reading http://thedanplan.com/blog/ - Dan quit his job to learn to play golf, something he'd never done before. Currently he's at 3000 hours of practice...

Playing up to your opponent's level can happen in tennis too. One of the factors I think might be coming into play, especially in a sport like volleyball or tennis, is that your opponent is directly across from you and their play provides a mental model for you during the game. You can subconsciously mimic what they do, and their actions during the game act as a constant reminder for how to play well.

I noticed this snow skiing too. I had learned to ski when I was four and went multiple times a year every year, but I lived in Texas so it wasn't an everyday event. Then one mogul run I followed directly behind a more advanced skier, mimicking his moves and rhythm, and all of a sudden on that run it clicked -- my skill level shot up several folds.

Believe in the you who believes in yourself. That's the accurate way of phrasing it.

That's a great story Jason. Thanks for sharing. I think this is precisely what happens in software development.

Fake it 'till you make is time and time again proven itself to work, especially when you surround yourself with people smarter than yourself.

That last bit is crucial - surround yourself with people smarter than you - otherwise you'll spend most of your time solving complex problems in inefficient ways, which could very much work against you.

Yes. A thousands times, yes! Some people find themselves to be the smartest person in the room and think, "I've made it!" Others, in the same situation think, "Time to move on..."

Agree completely. The moment you can't learn from those surrounding you is when you start to stagnate.

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