[lxe]

It's not grinding though. My highschool years were also super productive when it came to programming-related things, while I have seen most of my peers, aside from select few, really struggle despite their willingness. So maybe there is some secret sauce that can help others to get good a this. Maybe it's a mindset or attitude, etc...

[tomashubelbauer]

I don't know. I definitely did grind programming a lot as a teenager and for a few years as a young adult. But the grinding was effortless to me. It was as if this type of activity was replenishing my energy reserves instead of making me tired. I rarely needed to take breaks and indeed frequently forgot to eat or sleep when deep in my sessions. So it wasn't a struggle at all, but it was still a grind I would say. Or maybe I am misunderstanding the word and it would be better to say it was a lot of time spent, at the very least.

I don't think anyone can do this, I think you need to have that connection with programming where it is harder resist it than it is to do the work. But it doesn't mean people like the author of the article have a secret sauce and them recounting their experience to their peers to inspire them isn't worth much to them as a result I would expect. It's the "draw the rest of the fucking owl" type a thing I think.

BTW I don't mean to say I was a super duper genius as a teenager for whom programming was like breathing. I refused to study anything, I only enjoyed discovering things myself and I had no direction in my programming knowledge collection at all. A more disciplined person would have beaten me easily, and many have. Despite the ease with which programming came to me I didn't do that much productive stuff. I was mostly just having immense amounts of fun and joy. I do feel a bit sad sometimes about not getting a bigger edge now, but realistically, when push comes to shove, I wouldn't change it anyway.

[brailsafe]

Willingness is almost antithetical to having the motivation to grind in my mind. In order to do something persistently, you need to trade something for it, and often times you need to ignore the fact that the trade isn't worth it, or not have anything else competing for that attention in the first place; in otherwords, some level of compulsion as well as willingness.

It's the same with skateboarding, or any other interest that is difficult, time consuming, character building, and that requires obsession.

The defining characteristic of programming, as opposed to some others, is that it's complex and only intellectually demanding, whereas the others are some combination of physical and mental stress. People don't know how to navigate that from the beginning, but the ones who have the disposition to simply throw themselves at it regardless of failure, repeatedly, figure it out eventually.

The ones who actually succeed in a career of it are probably the ones who figured out how to dial it back as an obsession, and stop when they're 10hrs in to take a different approach.