| > This psychological defeat is what keeps you up at night. I totally agree. I'm a bad programmer who knows little about lower level systems. And it is exactly the thought of "I need to get to the bottom of things" that kept me burning candles after my son went to bed. But humans are fragile. I wish I were a machine who could just turn on/off with a flip of a switch. Human emotions, good or bad, mostly impede my progression. If I quaff a coffee, I get excited, but that doesn't necessarily mean I can tune into production mode immediately. If I have a depression/anxiety session, it usually wasted that whole day. I guess only the passion part works to some sort. I look up to people like John Carmack, David Cutler, Tom West and Fabrice Bellard who can design, implement and debug complex systems, given it in hardware or software, or both. I admire most not their technical prowess, but their seemingly emotionless devotion to their objectives. > Mediocrity is directionless I can relate to it too. Or maybe it's better to say -- you are mediocre BECAUSE you are directionless. I dabbed into many things, but never drilled deep enough to grow that into a career, or even a serious hobby. I think it's mostly in the Gene, given I have always been like this for the last 40 or so years. I could recall my 5-year old version sitting there, impatient with a construction toy. And when I look at my kid I immediately identify this deficiency. I feel sorry for him because I don't really know how to deal with it myself, let alone guide him through. I might find him a therapist if he goes down into this dark alley for too long. |