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Comment by SamReidHughes | Hacker News Reader

> Is the fact that I'm bad at competitive coding a symptom of something serious (weak foundations in algorithms/data structures)? Am I missing out on something?

Maybe. Assuming equal practice/preparation time, they're smarter than you.

No big deal.

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Do people actually think like this?

All it means is that they're better at what competitive coding tests for. There's nothing about being "smart."

What do you think being smart does for you, then?

Here we are thinking you're not very smart for making a comment like that.

The fact is that there is no single "smart". Instead there are many aptitudes, which combine and overlap to make people good or bad at specific skills.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was strong, but an average rock climber could best him at rock climbing. The average long distance runner could run laps around him.

We all understand this to be the case with respect to physical activities, but for some reason this idea of single-faceted intelligence persists.

I'm not positing single-faceted intelligence. (Which does exist, there are obvious kinds of brain problems that hurt you at every task.) I'm saying their intellectual talent is what makes them better than OP. Their natural ability. The stuff that's useful for programming contests, obviously. Low on geometry, high on logic and algebra, good for one-hour problems moreso than research, that sort of math.

You would be wrong. People being skilled in different environments does not mean they're more or less intelligent than others. Someone being poor at spelling bees would not a bad writer make for example.

Okay, so to settle this question, OP can ask these classmates what they got on the SAT.

If you think the SAT is in any way shape or form an indicator of intelligence or skills you would be objectively wrong. Someone with ADHD is likely going to perform poorly on the SATs due to the test environment but that does not indicate how well they'll perform in a professional environment.

Similarly I can think of people in college who would abuse Adderall in order to get higher scores. Do you think those people are more or less intelligent? Should we consider the metrics before or after usage?

This is a wild tangent that has nothing to do with OP's situation, which is that he went to a university with several classmates that are smarter than him/her. This is generally a good thing for your university to have.

And no, he doesn't have any hypothetical brain powers that make up for it.

You keep assuming that his classmates are smarter than them on the basis of one point of data. You're extrapolating so much out of a simple statement that it ventures into the realm of absurdity.

And you brought us into this wild tangent by implying that SAT scores are somehow indicative of general intelligence and asking the OP to see what they got on their SATs.

SAT scores are indicative of general intelligence, and a good double check that it isn't underpreparation with algorithms or less experience simply coding.

OP presumably isn't the smartest kid in his university. It's unlikely. Such is life.

Americans seem so obsessed with the SAT. Why do test scores matter so much to people? My friends and I used to compete with one another by writing IQ tests and comparing the results. It was sort of fun, but its not like the results meant anything. Especially since the scores went up the more we wrote the silly things. Did we get smarter? Clearly.

Try having a classroom discussion with kids that got 750 verbal score vs. kids that got 650. You'll see the difference.

I got a 750 verbal (680 math) and am quite stupid. Am I the exception that proves the rule?

No, 750 is pathetic. I got 850 verbal.

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