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Success Not Just a Matter of Talent
NinjaCoder writes "The Guardian has an interesting article based on a new book (Outliers: The Story Of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell) which examines some persons of interest to computer technology (Bill Joy, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, amongst others). It examines reasons for their successes and strongly suggests a link between practice (10,000 hours by age 20 being the magic milestone) and luck. This maybe an obvious truism, but the article does give interesting anecdotes on how their personal circumstances led to today's technological landscape. It points out that many of the luminaries of the current tech industry were born around 1955, and thus able to take advantage of the emerging technologies.
Within the next 2-3 years (if it hasn't happened already) we should be seeing plenty of 20 year olds with at least 10,000 hours of World of Warcrafting under their belt before their birthday.
I guess there are going to be a lot of highly successful World of Warcraft experts in society.
I am with Bjarne on this one.
Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of the C++ programming language, claims that C++ is experiencing a revival and
that there is a backlash against newer programming languages such as Java and C#. "C++ is bigger than ever.
There are more than three million C++ programmers. Everywhere I look there has been an uprising
- more and more projects are using C++. A lot of teaching was going to Java, but more are teaching C++ again.
There has been a backlash.", said Stroustrup.
He continues.. ..What would the world be like without Google?... Only C++ can allow you to create applications as powerful as MapReduce which allows them to create fast searches.
I totally agree. If Java ( or Pyhton etc. for that matter ) were fast enough why did Google choose C++ to build their insanely fast search engine. MapReduce rocks.. No Java solution can even come close.
I rest my case.
A couple weeks ago, while browsing around the Apple store, I had to take a piss. As I entered the john, Steve Jobs came out of one of the booths. I stood at the urinal looking at him out of the corner of my eye as I noticed that he didn't wash his hands. He didn't glanced at me with a queer, mischievous grin before he walked out the door. As soon as he left I darted into the booth he'd vacated, hoping there might be a lingering smell of shit and even a seat still warm from his sturdy ass. I found not only the smell but the shit itself. He'd forgotten to flush. And what a treasure he had left behind. Three or four beautiful specimens plus the soggy corpse of a gerbil and a stained, inoperable iPhone floated in the bowl. The real prize was a great feast of turd -- a nine inch gastrointestinal triumph as thick as his cock -- or at least as I imagined it! I knelt before the bowl, inhaling the rich brown fragrance and wondered if I should obey the impulse building up inside me. I'd always been a casual Apple user and had admired Steve Jobs since the unveiling of the original iPod. Of course I'd had fantasies of meeting him, sucking his cock and balls, not to mention sucking his asshole clean, and I knew that I had a chance since I have AIDS and he does too! Now, here I was, confronted with the most beautiful five-pound turd I'd ever feasted my eyes on, a sausage fit to star in any fantasy and one I knew to have been hatched from the asshole of Steve Jobs...