Natural Born Talent. Does it exist, or is it a myth?
There are tons of developers who start their career or university and believe they are not enough. They are not just less than others, there is a privileged breed of developers whom talent they can never reach. They are born with their talent, and it can never be reached by mortal engineers. At least that’s what newbies believe. But is this true?
Natural-born “genius”. I have a love-hate relationship with these words. I love hearing it when my peers say I’m exceptional in some ways. On the other hand, hearing I’m exceptional, makes my trainings less valuable, like I just had the skills from the start.
When first I started coding in high schools, I’ve had a few classmates that I thought were aliens. They know so much about technical stuff, and they even could develop a program. I had no idea how that could be done. I had a little technical knowledge, and I’ve only learned that because I broke the family computer a few times. Those “alien” classmates were like gods, until I started learning deeper. I’ve started programming, making my first hello world, my first platformer in Unity, and created a NAS with Proxmox, from the old family computer that I’ve had my adventures before.
After a few years, when some of my classmates started learning programming in school, I already knew some basic stuff. That was the moment I realized, the way I’ve looked to my “talented” peers, was the way that I was looked upon. It helped me realize, that maybe practice, and experiments are more helpful for developing skills than “natural-born talent”. And that we can over mystify others a lot. But my skills were bad then compared to now, there were some concepts I couldn’t figure out before, even though are simple like the greedy algorithm.
Let’s jump to the start of university. There were 2 ends of the spectrum. The guys who have been programming and the ones that just started. Everyone who just started thought I was the “alien”. They believed I was smarter than them, just because I had more experience with hobby stuff.
It raised my ego to unnatural levels. I felt like I’m actually better than others. And while ego can be helpful, it can make oneself careless, and I was lazy by nature. I have a hard time starting a task and feeling like I’m better than others is really harmful to my work ethic, especially in learning. My improvement was slowed for a few years, just because I believed I was “Naturally talented” and discredited the work I have already done.
Natural-born “genius”. I have a love-hate relationship with these words. I dislike these words since it makes all the hard work disappear. It makes lose all the adventures that made your current skill set. The all-nighters, the days spent arguing with computers because you had a disagreement about your code, when you have the flow and code for a week straight, or when everything works and finally that f___ <div> is centered.
But also, genius have a positive vibe. You get praised, because others couldn’t yet figure out how much practice you put into your skills. They want to raise this level, and probably they will. If you are a “natural-born genius” accept the praise, but never let your ego fool you, you worked for this expertise.
Note: Because I am a developer, I looked this from the viewpoint of my industry and career development. This probably translate to all the other industries. Also, this is my first article, so please shower me with critics, I’m interested in other’s opinion
