[michaelochurch]

People need to stop re-hashing this. 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is likely but not necessarily going to make you an excellent programmer. I know plenty of programmers in their 40s and older who have that much time in or more that are frankly, garbage.

Sure. And I could spend 10,000 hours playing basketball and I'd never become good at it. I don't have the genes. The point about "10,000 hours" is not that anyone can become good. It's that this is the amount of time that it takes for a person with sufficient talent (which is uncommon but not outstandingly rare, as it might seem) to become great at something.

Also, 10,000 hours of inadequate or badly-structured practice is useless. Otherwise, five years of work would be enough, and for most people, it's not. Most of the things that software developers do for money don't make them better programmers and therefore don't count.

It's hit or miss. In my experience, passion counts more than anything.

I agree. Passion, creativity, and courage are all important. It takes all three to figure out how to divert 10,000 hours away from what you're "supposed to do" and toward what will actually teach you something.

[jodrellblank]

The point about 10,000 hours is that anyone can become good.

The point of Outliers, the Gladwell book, is to dismiss the idea that talent exists at all. "A person with sufficient talent", as you say, is a person who started onto decent amounts of practise at a young age, such that by the time the world notices them at age 8, 10 or 14, they're already surprisingly good and can make good use of professional coaching.

[alnayyir]

The 10,000 hours meme is something a bad author made up to fit his pile of anecdotes.

It's not a fact, it's a number he pulled out of his ass.

He never made it about deliberate practice, he used the Beatles jamming and fucking around for 10,000 hours as an example.

Stop talking about 10,000 hours IT'S BULLSHIT. You might was replace-string it with "SIX-SIGMA CERTIFICATION", it means nothing!

[jodrellblank]

He used The Beatles travelling to Germany and having to perform for severl hours every night for months as the turning point between them being a band and them being a good band.

He didn't say they were "jamming and fucking around", or anything of the sort. He also didn't say "chord progressions is the only practise that counts", to reply to your other comment.

He also also didn't say "10,000 hours is a fact, 9,999 hours won't do", it's an anecdote fitting rule of thumb to tell a story.

But if you can find plenty of people who are world class at what they do, and haven't done anything close to 10,000 hours of doing it, have at it.