Learning Lisp - Comments

"Capable of working through entire books of information; does especially well with brief descriptions/examples followed by exercises. Capable of working for extended periods of time. Capable of relating the information to other experiences/activities in creative ways. A strong “visionary” streak. Good in brainstorming sessions. A strong focus on the implications of new ideas/frameworks/strategies. Can do a great deal on his own, but will often miss key techniques due to his “detail blindness” and lack of thoroughness– he relies on common sense, inspiration, and brute force in order to keep up with “normal people.”" - Fa La La La Lindsay from Bookmarklet

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This guy also has another really good post: http://lispy.wordpress.com/2008... It's scary how much that describes me. - Fa La La La Lindsay

he or she :) - anna sauce

Right, anna... he talks about it from his personal perspective so he used "he"... I don't get why people were in such a miff about that. It can (and does) apply to women too... he wasn't trying to offend us but obviously can't really write it from the female perspective. Omission doesn't mean exclusion. :) - Fa La La La Lindsay

Wow, wow, wow - he couldn't have more totally pegged me if he tried. I don't so much see Lindsay like that (though she shares a lot of those traits), but the thing about organization is EXACTLY me. Everything in that list is me. It's like he's studied me for years. Weird. - Chrimmus Tad

Most of the things that he says that don't seem like I have that trait to you are just because I have been trained otherwise: My mom is a neat-freak and so I know HOW to organize and SEE things that are a mess and need to be cleaned, but it's still hard to motivate myself to take care of them, especially when there's something "better" to do. - Fa La La La Lindsay

There are a lot of people identifying with what's said in this post, according to the huge comment list. One liner and multiple paragraph comments. - Stu Andrews

It's easy to read a list and "see" the points in yourself. I'd say from my perspective I'm all of those things to some extent, even though, as you intimated Lindsay I might have been trained, or trained myself, otherwise. That's self-diagnosis though, and there were only one or two comments in the list where people were commenting about someone else. - Stu Andrews

Lindsay, thankyou for friendfeeding this, it was a REALLY thought-provoking piece :) I've passed it round to the handful of other devs here, and it's started conversations instantly. - Stu Andrews

Wow. That second post is as disturbingly perceptive as the first. "To most people, “it’s just words”… but this guy spends so much time in his own head, he doesn’t really differentiate between ideas and reality. Ideas *are* reality to this guy!" - Stu Andrews

Sorry, will stop hogging this thread. Had to laugh though, reality check with this comment. "Bruce Says: August 28, 2008 at 1:37 pm I call shenanigans. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re all misunderstood geniuses. Right. In 20+ years of working in this industry I’ve never met anyone like this who I’d describe as a genius. Generally, the real words that come to mind are “pain in the ass”, “loser”,... more... - Stu Andrews

I've run into a few of those programmers... they have gaps in their knowledge, sometimes they have really limited experience and are not sure how to approach a new technology ...then they're dangerous cuz they have to hide their ignorance. - Susan Beebe

Sometimes in these breakdowns everyone wants to ascribe it to a personality disorder, instead of just... a personality. Not perfect, but not abnormal, in that normal is a combination of traits. - anna sauce

I don't think it's a "disorder" either... There's going to be a segment of the population that has those traits... they're necessary and productive in some circumstances and so benefit the gene pool of the species. But I think that they're a pretty rare combination, or at least not a commonly recognized one and these blog posts do a good job of cataloging the aspects. - Fa La La La Lindsay

@Susan, you're right, that personality can be "dangerous" in younger, more inexperienced programmers... There is such a big desire to "prove your worth" that people can get themselves into trouble and ego battles. It takes years, but eventually you learn how to deal with it and become a good consultant-type (or not and you end up a short-term contractor hopping around forever...). - Fa La La La Lindsay

I don't really think it's about being a "genius". I just think it's a different way of perceiving the world... and because it's so analytical and we build models of reality in our heads and compare their validity that other people don't take the time or effort to then it seems like we're smarter, simply because we're able to see the world from so many angles. We tend to dismiss people who don't do that as "stupid", "close-minded" or even "intellectually lazy". - Fa La La La Lindsay

Letting Jason read... - Cyndy

Cyndy! LOL! - Susan Beebe

Lindsay - well said!! Experience is definitely the key... you got it! - Susan Beebe

Posted my thoughts, http://stuandrews.com/2008... - Stu Andrews

These two recent blog posts seem to pin down some of the more generic aspects of the phenomenon: http://lbrandy.com/blog... and http://www.randsinrepose.com/archive... (The first is a what developers hate type post... and the second is about compensating for things you're horrible at.) - Learning Lisp

Thanks for the links, LL. I am enjoying them both. :) - Fa La La La Lindsay

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