As a rule, I reserve judgement about any "new study", but also as a rule I think that anything Malcolm Gladwell says is bullshit, so I'm torn on this one.
So, it looks like ignoring Malcolm Gladwell was the right answer here. It usually is.
> later studies on the importance of deliberate practice have almost all come up with lower values for the correlation between deliberate practice hours and performance.
What's also really interesting is the differences in the kind of data used to measure deliberate practice: daily logs, which you'd think be the most accurate, showed the least correlation with performance, while retrospective interviews showed the most. Biases in recollection or researcher allegiance?
You simulataneously discount his entire canon of work and also every single underlying scientific paper he has quoted, cited or referenced. That is a lot of work to label bullshit.
Also, what are you wary about? You can check every statement I've made on this subject by reading the article. It's not long. You don't have to bother deciding whether or not to be suspicious of me.
So nothing that Gladwell writes has justification? Seems like you have a deep hatred of his writing and are unable to critique his ideas objectively.
I read the article; I have read the 10 years/10,000 hours peice and it's detractors numerous times. I don't use that one argument to tear down a man's work though. People fixate on one part of one chapter.
His study of the Gore-Tex working practices and racism in the Caribbean I thought were particularly excellent.
Protip: If somebody apparently smart says something that you interpret as being completely idiotic, take some time to see if you can find another interpretation.
I have not increased the drama at all. Someone posted a totally hyperbolic statement. I called them on it. It was upvoted numerous times I suspect because a consensus agrees with me.
It is not intelligent to tear down popular things because they are popular. You could have very well removed Gladwell and added Apple, Microsoft or French wine.
I haven't yelled, have I?
Your protip is baffling. Who is apparently smart? The OP? How have you reached that conclusion? By the possession of a HN account?
Its a qualifier stating that what ever follows is a personal heuristic not a claim of fact.
Your current level of argumentative dickishness would probably disqualify you as a useful interlocutor for me regardless of how much you stand behind your words. E.g., the "you never asked me my name" bullshit. So I'm done with you.
Gladwell's paper was so explicit that I thought it couldn't possibly be true, despite the niceties of "We'd like practice to be important"
The best programmers (and martial artists, and runners, and basketball players) I personally know are the ones who practiced the most, but I've struggled with causation and correlation. They generally got early head starts, and kept plowing ahead.
Competitive multiplayer video games would have this kind of data. Or even all types of video games.
>This view holds that expert performance largely reflects accumulated amount of deliberate practice, which Ericsson et al. defined as engagement in structured activities created specifically to improve performance in a domain.
As an entrepreneur or programmer, I think that it's very hard to do deliberate practice - there are few structured activities you can do to improve your skills, as both fields, even in their more basic tasks, incorporate various skills and approaches.
For example, you wouldn't say 'today I practice for-loops' and then do nothing but write for-loops all day. You can say 'today I write a program that uses while loops instead of for-loops', but I think that wouldn't count as deliberate practice anymore - the structure of the task changes with the focus and task of your program (you'd also have to do more like de-bugging, tests etc.)
As a tennis player, however, you can say 'today I practice serves' and then do nothing but serve balls all day, that's a structured task that doesn't change. Apparently it just doesn't help that much.
In music you can craft repetitive exercises to improve small aspects of your skillset, but in computer science you can't do that exactly (or sanely). However, I do find myself directing my study in a similar way. I have various high-level goals and I try to find some way to get at them on a daily basis. I use concrete projects like reading a book, doing exercises, or taking on a hobby project. It feels very similar to practicing music, but I wouldn't call it practicing. It's my practice!
I would suggest that revisiting code which you have previously written, and trying to re-factor it, or at least considering how this could be done (and its impacts), is a very useful tool to help you 'practice' coding. I know that this is imperfect, but I have personally learned a lot from applying new lessons (from books, experience, or code reviews) to my own prior work.
How nice that we outsiders can be of some use.
Sites like topcoder and Project Euler are actually very good at building skills... they're much like playing arpeggios or similar exercises... they're small, may take 30 minutes to two hours to complete, and the more you do the more used to solving problems you get, and you also find out what you need to improve upon.