from Hacker News

Be prolific

by hecticjeff on 10/23/20, 6:56 AM with 131 comments

  • by ChrisRackauckas on 10/23/20, 8:40 AM

    When teaching mathematics I like to always mention that the greats like Ramanujan, while it seems like they just knew everything from pure thought, they all actually did a ton of work by hand. Ramanujan in particular is known for his fastidious notebooks calculating thousands of digits numbers like pi. From writing out the calculations for hours and days, he'd come up with simplification formulas and develop new insights. These days, we have a tendency to just look at the formula and go "wow, how the heck did the think of that?" Well, what we would call "busy work".

    Do the busy work. Do the calculations. Write it all out. Nobody is better than the busy work: it pays off and it's how you learn.

  • by _Microft on 10/23/20, 8:18 AM

    I'm reasonably sure that it was a pottery class (or study) in which students/study participants were asked to produce either the best piece they could think of or as many as possible. I think it was actually a study that I read about.

    It might need some internet sleuthing to find it. I'll try later.

    I do not think that it is surprising that practice improves skills though (well, except for people with an exceptionally fixed mindset ;).

    (For today's lucky Ten Thousand, "fixed mindset" refers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset#Fixed_and_Growth_Minds... )

    (For today's lucky Ten Thousand, "today's lucky Ten Thousand" refers to https://xkcd.com/1053/ )

  • by shannifin on 10/23/20, 8:53 AM

    "Quantity leads to quality."

    The analogy of being graded on quantity in an art class tends to make me imagine I'd just line up a ton of canvases and slop paint on them all at once to be the top of the class, or create pots in only their crudest acceptable form.

    That is, quantity does not lead to quality by itself. The student must be trying to learn something new with each new piece. Quantity iterates the feedback loop. The student still must be able to identify mistakes or areas where improvement is needed. Doing that means paying attention to quality.

    So it's not really about ignoring quantity or quality for the sake of the other, but finding a good balance.

  • by Insanity on 10/23/20, 8:02 AM

    It's the same with software I imagine, because of several reasons.

    1. Writing more code (and being conscious of it) makes you a better engineer. You'll run into more issues that you will fix and, hopefully, remember.

    2. If you'd take the art example and say "Paint 20 cubist pieces", and then transfer that to "Write 20 authentication servers", each iteration you'll benefit from what you learned and be able to 'clean up' the code. It's essentially writing 20 PoCs where each PoC improves on the last one.

    EDIT: Writing more versions also allows you to explore more ideas without fear. If you have to write "one good version" you'll be less prone to exploring 'exotic' ideas. So you'd benefit from that as well.

  • by throw149102 on 10/23/20, 9:37 AM

    I realize this is a silly criticism, but it's strange that the author would write about how it's valuable to make a lot of stuff but then to only write 11 sentences about the topic. It seems like it would be much better way to demonstrate the point if the author wrote 100 pages about producing more work/art/code, without any rhyme or reason or editing. After all, the thesis is "Quantity leads to quality", why not just do that?

    Of course, I appreciate concise writing and if it were 100 unedited rambling pages it would never be posted on HN or read by anyone. But admitting that seems to be antithetical to the entire point of the blogpost. It just seems like the article doesn't even believe in the idea. It also feels like there wasn't a whole lot of thought put into the post, and I guess that's evidenced by the fact that the art class anecdote doesn't have a source.

    The blogpost also ignores all of the issues related to being prolific. Imagine a would-be-weightlifter who has awful form, but does a ton of reps. Not only is their exercise near worthless, it could be potentially dangerous. Or in music, where you could accidentally continually practice a bad habit instead of taking the time to find a mentor and learn how to practice correctly. In software, you could potentially produce something that is buggy and insecure by default. If the code were then included as a dependency in larger projects it could be a cause for a security disaster. I think there's more to high-quality work/practice than just doing it more often, even if that ends up being the most important part of getting good at something.

  • by throwawaylolx on 10/23/20, 9:07 AM

    What's the point of these posts? It's an opinion based on nothing else than a hypothetical anecdote. Is it motivational posts for HN readers--is this what "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" these days?

  • by herodoturtle on 10/23/20, 8:23 AM

    A friend of mine is a sculptor. He once said something to me along the lines of "if you want to make the perfect sculpture, don't try to make the perfect sculpture. Instead make lots of sculptures, until you make the perfect sculpture." - which I tend to agree with.

    His advice had more to do with enjoying the process instead of stressing about the end goal, which I quite liked.

    In the context of software, I think that being prolific is certainly key, but it also helps to study the masters. I've learnt some pretty cool lessons reading the source code of popular OSS applications for example.

  • by terse_malvolio on 10/23/20, 8:53 AM

    In a way I feel like quality vs quantity is a false dichotomy. What's important is deliberate practice, which can be deficient in either.

    Is it worth doing 100 reps in the gym if they're all with bad form? It's better to solve the same problem in 5 ways or 5 different problems once?

  • by bachmeier on 10/23/20, 2:00 PM

    When a junior colleague tells me a paper has been rejected, I respond that it's good they're getting the rejections out of the way so they can get to the publications. I'm sure they think I'm an idiot, but I'm completely serious. You can't learn what it takes to get a good publication until you've had some rejections. It's all part of the learning process.

    I think that's the real message here. Be prolific in activities that can teach you something useful. Just pumping out a load of garbage won't help you any more than practicing bad shooting form will make you a good basketball player.

  • by preommr on 10/23/20, 1:09 PM

    As opposed to what?

    Nobody has ever just suddenly become good at something with 0 practice. Usually, there's a strong correlation between time spent on something and expertise.

    If the discussion is about quality vs. quantity, then this is a strawman. You can make a 100 shallow todo list apps, and they'll all be worse than one you focus on and polish over time. That story about the art class is most likely not true and most likely not applicable to other examples. But maybe part of that polish is experimenting with smaller prototypes.

    The point is to always use advice like this as a principle and not a singular source of truth.

  • by jedimastert on 10/23/20, 1:12 PM

    It's funny this should some up, as I'm about 3/4ths through Inktober. The idea is that you make an art piece (traditionally an ink illustration but I've been using water color and the community is surprisingly not super gate-keeping about it) everyday and share it on social media. There's a prompt list the guy who made the idea popular puts out each year that's optional.

    I've painted more this month than I have the rest of my life combined and I've learned so much.

    Also self-promotion say what? instagram.com/amtunlimited

  • by lordnacho on 10/23/20, 10:57 AM

    Maybe the thing I would add is that you need to have reached a level of competence where you can critique your own work.

    It's hard to describe it, but in many areas you will find there's a level where you know where you're going wrong, or where you need external help, and generally whether you are on the right path.

    Before you reach that level you will just fumble around forever. I'm pretty sure I could play a lot of silly piano tunes without getting anywhere, since I have no experience at all in that field.

  • by bluetomcat on 10/23/20, 8:36 AM

    The definition of "creating more" is the elephant in the room. Do you stay focused on one subject, iterating multiple times over the result, in order to achieve incremental improvements? Do you explore a wide breadth of problems, giving you new perspectives on thinking about the problem at hand? Do you churn out mindless crap just for the sake of it?

    It's a rather fuzzy and abstract philosophical notion and any attempts for an absolute framing of "the one single truth" are flawed.

  • by appleflaxen on 10/23/20, 10:19 AM

      There’s a story about an art teacher that split their class 
  in half. They told one half of the students that they’d be 
  graded based on a single piece of work, and the other half 
  that they would be graded on the quantity of work produced.
    Does anyone know of an actual event where this happened, or is it apocryphal?

    (I don't disagree with the premise, I'm just curious about its basis)

  • by alltakendamned on 10/23/20, 8:09 AM

    While "practice makes perfect" is not a very new idea, it is still nice to be reminded about it from time to time.

  • by kulshan on 10/23/20, 4:53 PM

    The down side is your peer community then has to sift through an enormous amount of mediocrity...this idea of quantity leading to quality is beneficial for the creator's development, but as seen say in electronic music today. There is a proliferation of mediocre music in such abundance no one would ever be able to listen to it all. Sure it'll lead to eventual gems as skills increase but will we ever find them in the mountainous waves of creation being churned out in increasing amounts? As far as coding should developers produce more and more code for the public as a learning tool for themselves or wait and develop adequate skills that don't require extra work to fix later?

  • by ChrisMarshallNY on 10/23/20, 8:46 AM

    This has always been my own basic approach. I am constantly writing stuff.

    More importantly, I’m constantly writing different stuff. I write about that here: https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/thats-not-what-ships-are-...

    The iteration definitely helps me to be a better engineer. Also, pretty much every day, I start off with an issue ahead of me that I’m afraid of, and am not sure how to solve.

    I often have several problems solved by 7AM.

  • by xondono on 10/23/20, 9:05 AM

    When presented with this kind of “simple advice”, I always like to think the counter examples.

    Quantity is great, unless you are trying to change a paradigm. Iterative learning gets you trapped in local minima, so be sure to aim for quality once in a while.

    I would also not take that “experiment” that seriously, because the requirements where obviously different, each class optimized as needed. “Quality” is an abstract concept, and most of the time you are better of saving the time than spending it on “Quality”.

  • by OliverM on 10/23/20, 9:16 AM

  • by quickthrower2 on 10/23/20, 9:59 AM

    Anecdotal: I’ve been helping people a bit recently on the free code camp forum and I believe in quantity. The more I help the more I learn. Half the time I learn why someone gets stuck, the other half I’m actually wrong and I learn where I got stuck!

  • by kapilkaisare on 10/23/20, 11:47 AM

    Reminds me of this talk I saw by Ray Bradbury on writing, where he said (I paraphrase):

    Aim to write one story a week. That gives you 52 stories a year, and I dare you to write 52 bad ones.

  • by tucuman87 on 10/23/20, 8:46 AM

    Meanwhile in academy everyone is complaining on the pressure to publish fast on expense of quality.... Maybe this judging on quantity isn't totally bad?

  • by pietromenna on 10/23/20, 4:12 PM

    The best teacher out there is a failure, and you only get better when learning new tricks. Let's use quantity of failures as opportunities to learn!

  • by wellpast on 10/23/20, 1:47 PM

    You need both.

    If you make a bunch of art but don’t try to make it quality, you’ll grow very little.

    You need to try hard many times and fail, then you get to mastery and quality.

  • by student2k on 10/24/20, 3:40 PM

    Quantity leads to permanence, not quality.

  • by joshdance on 10/23/20, 3:42 PM

    I hate this parable.

    There is no art teacher that did this. I wish we could find real examples instead of this fake one.

  • by gdsdfe on 10/23/20, 1:44 PM

    great advice, very inspiring ... love it!

  • by x87678r on 10/23/20, 1:52 PM

    Man I'm exhausted, I really hate this do more hype.