[JackMorgan]

I've got over a decade of deliberate and intense study and practice in programming. I love it and I love learning new things about it. I've worked in half a dozen professional languages and over a dozen for fun. I give conference talks and have two books out. And yet several people I work with can absolutely run circles around me due to much better long and short term memory. For every hour I put in, they can get farther with ten minutes. I only hold my own in the same league as them with 5x more effort. It's absolutely possible that there is a "wet-ware" component to mastery.

[Ellahn]

And you probably run circles around a lot of people. If anybody said you were gifted it would be a lie, it's the result of dedication. I've never seen anyone say "I have talent", and I've been to music and computer science colleges. I've seen a lot of people saying that other people have talent though.

But my point is not that everyone faces the same hardships, is just that those hardships or lack thereof are not genetic but acquired, probably mostly during early childhood but I'm not a psychologist so I don't know.

I just think we shouldn't dismiss achievements as a result of just talent (or luck). Luck actually plays a role, as well as many other things (As I said, economic and social situations and a lot more).

We just need to be sceptical of linking stuff to genes, humans are not so simple. There are many other factors at play, and even if we can't change ourselves, we may be able to raise our kids better by considering these subtleties and their possible impact.

Plus those "geniuses" love when people acknowledge their hard work, try talking to them about it. I find the amount of effort some people put into their craft to be staggering.