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Comment by kjgkjhfkjf | Hacker News Reader

"Get interested in programming, and do some because it is fun. Make sure that it keeps being enough fun so that you will be willing to put in your ten years/10,000 hours."

This is a great definition of talent.

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A friend of mine is a music producer and became an ‘overnight success’ when he handed a song to a DJ at an LA club and got signed and almost instantly was touring the world. I got to hang out after gigs while all these other big name djs were calling him a genius. The thing is he had been a bedroom producer and small time DJ for almost 15 years, though since he was 15 years old. I heard his songs even 5 years before he got signed and they were good, but not even close to the level he is now. He wasn’t a genius. It was a lot of hard work and persistence.

Overnight success takes years of preparation.

What's his name? I'd like to hear his songs.

What makes you think that genius exists and it is actually different from what your friend did/had?

I don’t think genius exists.

The truth is spend 10,000 hours building something in a certain language and try to find a job in a related language and those 10,000 hours mean very little.

I strongly disagree with this. I read Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years for the first time in 2007 and was learning C#. I changed languages 20 times and each one taught me something different or a new way of thinking about an old problem. Those 10,000 hours will be a great investment in your success.

The rest of it is networking.

Ok but that's a terrible definition of talent because that's not what talent is. Inherent ability is much more important than people like to admit to themselves or others. The 10,000 hours thing is also a myth.

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