I so relate to what you're talking about in this video.. I also give advice quite often, but people ignore it, I don't think that the advice is bad, it's quite frustrating to see the advice go out the window, just like that.. I didn't understand very well what you meant with outliers, but I guess it's the things one needs to do to achieve success, and people usually need to do stuff that only a very small percentage does to achieve success in the end.
this is a nice clip and I'm glad I'm the first here to say something about it. It is completely true and it is much deeper than the average can realize. I see the same things in chess. I have a saying about it , the hardest thing on the world is helping someone. On the surface ppl want help and advice but usually they just listen and nod then continue the same shit they have asked about. They are asking for repentance not for actually doing something.
Yep, most of our problems are rarely the result of us lacking the ability to solve the problem but more the result of us looking at something from the wrong perspective. Repentance is often the first step (and sometimes the only step) required to solve the problem. Once you see it you can't unsee it!
I'm pissed off. I made a game engine in rust. EVERYONE was telling me it would take YEARS. But it was actually pretty easy. It blows my mind how wrong they were 😑I'm not an especially skilled/talented person. They were just scared of making a custom game engine. They probably got their opinions from other people who told them what to believe. Plus, everyone is looking to justify using the game engine they're already using. People are just so full of shit, and that's why I'm pissed off.
I've spent most of my career making impossible things. Like a bucket of crabs, the hive mind will pull you down and stop you. It's hard or impossible for them to do it, so they don't want to be reminded of that by seeing you do it. Go, do hard things and you'll see that they're not so hard when you are willing to fail.
Bro, I was making game engines in C and C++ at age 16 back in 2001. I made a pacman demo in Computing class using Pascal - a language that you would assume is just text based, but on Windows 98 you could put a line of code that would run raw assembly language. There was an assembly instruction that would switch into 320x240 pixel graphic mode, and then another assembly instruction to plot a pixel at x, y coordinates. I just made those into Pascal functions and then mapped out a Pacman level, and made the pacman character check the next pixel value for collision. The assignment was to do some text based quiz thing, and I found working with pixels was more simple for me because I was used to video games, and could deal with simple pixels and pictures better than words. It takes people years because they just don't know how to break things down. It was always my struggle with complicated things that made me work hard at making every problem as simplified as possible. Computers are great for that because everything ends up as simple toddler math. You only have to figure out the matrix math part once, and you have it there in code. You don't have to get good at doing matrix math. You just have to figure it out once and then put it in a function or other type of reusable code.
Regarding on the workplace, I find it hard when you boss isnt convinced, they dont trust thst you can or maybe there are other reasons? I hate when others have low ambitions on your behalf
"when others have low ambition on your behalf" ... beautifully put! Captures the spirit of a number of workplaces I've been at over the years. I also like the saying "It's difficult to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys" :)
i have struggled with this for so many years, and will likely keep doing so for the rest of my days, though i get a more profound understanding of the underlying reasons for why this happens with time. the most infuriating thing is that people call you or anyone with the proper mindset a "genius". but i'm not a genius, i just DID THE GODDAMN FUCKIN THING AND YOU DIDN'T!!!!!!! the more you observe this behavior the more you come to realize that "geniuses" are actually extremely rare, most people esteemed as geniuses were likely just people with a particular upbringing and life experiences that led them to have specific ideas that resonated with people, and due to these experiences they also had the courage/willpower/naivety/craziness to execute those ideas. e.g. someone like Von Neumann was probably a true genius, but Steve Jobs wasn't. i think the problem is most people are raised in ways that are very restrictive, because society works that way so people end up that way, thus parents end up that way and that's what they transmit to their children. we are taught from a young age that pretty much everything we actually want to do is wrong, and the boring, predictable, pre-structured things are right. if you are not very resilient to this system, you will grow up with an innate resistence to thinking or doing anything outside of this framework. anything that sounds too crazy or out of the norm will not even be given a serious thought, even if you have living examples of their efficacy. i guess it's mainly fear. fear of doing something that is outside of the ruleset you've lived your entire life with. conformism basically. the typical reaction to giving a solution to a problem that seems unsolvable is to laugh it away, because the solution sounds so outlandish that it's taken as a joke. but then whoever actually attempts that "joke" is regarded as a genius. all they had to do was go through with the joke though. for example the other day at the table my grandma was talking about how worried she was about insecurity or whatever (3rd world country here), so i say "well you can just move to miami then", and she responds by LAUGHING, subsequently IGNORING the proposal. of course i was half-joking, but at the same time it's not a goddamn joke. she has so much goddamn money, extremely privileged compared to most of the population here, what's stopping her from actually moving to a 1st world country? her family and whatever sure, but what about 15 or 20 years ago, when she was also complaining about the exact same things, but wasn't as old? if the solution is so clear, why don't they take it seriously?
It's amazing how people just lock up completely against things they aren't experienced in. As you say even for things that are really simple. The knowledge, even if you show them the steps and they actually DO the thing and write their own step by step guide. The next time they need to do it they still call for your help! And it doesn't matter that they're people who are capable and confident in quite complex tasks otherwise. There's just some strange thing that happens in the brain completely blocking their ability to take in something new.
What exactly was his advice for game development and learning programming? I learned programming but I wonder what I might have skipped that prevents me from being as good as him.
Time matters greatly, yes. But I think the other two people are glossing over the complementary advice to seek challenges that further your abilities, understanding and goals. Stay curious and don't settle. I think that's also what's required to [reach your own limits].
@@CianMcsweeney This is absolutely it, and what beginners who want to improve fast need to understand. Don't spend hours designing a program. Just pick a project and code, code, code. Edit: Just in case anybody reads this, I do NOT mean writing a lot of code without running it. Always try to run your code often to make sure it works. If you think you need to write hundreds of lines before running the program, because there was no way to break it down into smaller chunks, you're probably wrong.
I think whilst people don't wanna be outliers, people also don't wanna be typical. So when you say, for the majority of people X will work, they don't wanna see themselves as generic and typical, so they might suggest something won't work because they think they need a special process. Where all they really need is to realise they aren't special and just listening and trying the advice given by people who accomplished the thing they want to also accomplish might actually work. But this will only work if you give it a solid try, not a "well okay then, fine! I'm not special, I'll try your stupid way and find out" and then wonder why they inevitably fail anyway.
It doesn't matter if you have talent or not, you have to put the time in regardless, some people will learn faster but if you like the thing you do, then you won't stop even if you knew for a fact you don't have a specific talent for that thing.
@@ramireiniUnless you're a 90-100 IQ person who likes programming. Then you're screwed - you'll spend decades on it and get nowhere. TBH though, people rarely like doing things they're terrible at, so the odds of this happening is not that high.
Also being able to fail for a long time many times in a row with seemingly no benefit is inherited and upbringing. Like even if free will is real, your stats are almost set in stone when you are an adult
I agree that there are talent and IQ (genetic) floors that many people cannot overcome. The thing that bugs me is that many people overestimate how much of these things you need to be successful. One likely needs to be in the 99.99th percentile to win a Fields Medal, but people who are "just" above average can find much more success than they realize if they work their asses off. The reality is that most above average people never try, and this is fine because living a normal life with a solid job that pays well is a good way to live.
I think the outlier argument is less true than the fact that it’s just hard to persistently do something for more than a couple of days. Most programmers want to be really good, so they actually want to be outliers.
The people who say “I can’t do that” are right. They have a realistic assessment of their own abilities. Intelligent people underestimate how difficult abstract reasoning is for the majority.
Not true at all. I'm not smart. I suck at arithmetic, my memory is terrible, I struggle with keeping more than 1 thing in my head at once. I struggle with reading so much that I've only ever read 1 novel in my entire life because it takes me 3 attempts to read each sentence. But I loved computers, and I use to pretend to be a game developer and make adventure games in paint programs that were just pictures in a paint program. But as I spent all my time wanting so badly to do things that were outside my abilities, I just kept trying to solve problems on my computer. I eventually figured out that in programming, you have to keep breaking things down more and more to understand concepts and solve problems. Anything slightly complicated was well beyond my ability, so I had to break things down until they were as simple as 1+1. I would spend so much time trying to get the computer to do what I wanted and was determined to do so. People now tell me I'm a great problem solver and a great programmer, and people hire me to do 5 people's jobs. I still think I'm nothing special, but I put in the time to pursue something that I was truly interested in, and eventually got there. Okay, so maybe the people who say "I can't do that" are right after all. Because they're not deluded enough to put in the time to actually try, and fail, and try, and fail, until they get somewhere. I would say J Blow's point applies.
I would say that accounts for a lot of cases, but probably not for most of those people who also watch Jon Blow's gamedev content. That itself betrays a certain level of esoteric interest in the finer details of game development philosophy and programming culture that someone with no ability at all is unlikely to care about.
"What you do is you say, okay, this is a problem, how do I solve it? You don't say, I can't do the thing because there's this problem." Such a good quote, and highlights an important difference in mindset.
The problem is more thinking that someone else has done it - and worse, done it better - and also that it's so incredibly hard as to realistically be pretty much impossible unless I dedicate many years of time and resources to it, and then often both of these at once :/
Pffff, ask the dude about communism and he will say: "Look at all the countries that had communism!" - all he said just don't apply to things, that he doesn't like. He immediately jumps to "there is a problem so you can't do that" instead of "problem is a problem, that need to be solved". He just decided, that it isn't possible, and don't think about it. He straight up saing, that you cannot build rocket, because some people tried and rockets fell.
Moral of the story: sometimes people who believe they can't do something can and sometimes people who believe they can do something can't. What a waste of 6 minutes
I so relate to what you're talking about in this video.. I also give advice quite often, but people ignore it, I don't think that the advice is bad, it's quite frustrating to see the advice go out the window, just like that.. I didn't understand very well what you meant with outliers, but I guess it's the things one needs to do to achieve success, and people usually need to do stuff that only a very small percentage does to achieve success in the end.
this is a nice clip and I'm glad I'm the first here to say something about it. It is completely true and it is much deeper than the average can realize. I see the same things in chess. I have a saying about it , the hardest thing on the world is helping someone. On the surface ppl want help and advice but usually they just listen and nod then continue the same shit they have asked about. They are asking for repentance not for actually doing something.
Yep, most of our problems are rarely the result of us lacking the ability to solve the problem but more the result of us looking at something from the wrong perspective.
Repentance is often the first step (and sometimes the only step) required to solve the problem.
Once you see it you can't unsee it!
I'm pissed off.
I made a game engine in rust. EVERYONE was telling me it would take YEARS. But it was actually pretty easy. It blows my mind how wrong they were 😑I'm not an especially skilled/talented person. They were just scared of making a custom game engine. They probably got their opinions from other people who told them what to believe. Plus, everyone is looking to justify using the game engine they're already using.
People are just so full of shit, and that's why I'm pissed off.
I've spent most of my career making impossible things. Like a bucket of crabs, the hive mind will pull you down and stop you. It's hard or impossible for them to do it, so they don't want to be reminded of that by seeing you do it.
Go, do hard things and you'll see that they're not so hard when you are willing to fail.
Well said!!! Reading what you wrote makes me inspired@@Toleich
Bro, I was making game engines in C and C++ at age 16 back in 2001. I made a pacman demo in Computing class using Pascal - a language that you would assume is just text based, but on Windows 98 you could put a line of code that would run raw assembly language. There was an assembly instruction that would switch into 320x240 pixel graphic mode, and then another assembly instruction to plot a pixel at x, y coordinates. I just made those into Pascal functions and then mapped out a Pacman level, and made the pacman character check the next pixel value for collision. The assignment was to do some text based quiz thing, and I found working with pixels was more simple for me because I was used to video games, and could deal with simple pixels and pictures better than words.
It takes people years because they just don't know how to break things down. It was always my struggle with complicated things that made me work hard at making every problem as simplified as possible. Computers are great for that because everything ends up as simple toddler math. You only have to figure out the matrix math part once, and you have it there in code. You don't have to get good at doing matrix math. You just have to figure it out once and then put it in a function or other type of reusable code.
People that can tell you 10 problems with anything you want to do are so funny.
If you know what the problems are, you can solve them.
🧠 big brain
Dude just did a Cancer Rate = 0 Any% run.
Would be interested in what sort of languages you wrote previously Jonathon?
Regarding on the workplace, I find it hard when you boss isnt convinced, they dont trust thst you can or maybe there are other reasons? I hate when others have low ambitions on your behalf
"when others have low ambition on your behalf" ... beautifully put! Captures the spirit of a number of workplaces I've been at over the years. I also like the saying "It's difficult to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys" :)
@@danielscott4514 nice, idiom 😁 I'm just at a loss of what to do/how to handle it
There's something inherently wrong about working under someone who you think has bad taste or is otherwise not as smart as you.
How much debt are you willing / able to go into?
i have struggled with this for so many years, and will likely keep doing so for the rest of my days, though i get a more profound understanding of the underlying reasons for why this happens with time.
the most infuriating thing is that people call you or anyone with the proper mindset a "genius". but i'm not a genius, i just DID THE GODDAMN FUCKIN THING AND YOU DIDN'T!!!!!!!
the more you observe this behavior the more you come to realize that "geniuses" are actually extremely rare, most people esteemed as geniuses were likely just people with a particular upbringing and life experiences that led them to have specific ideas that resonated with people, and due to these experiences they also had the courage/willpower/naivety/craziness to execute those ideas. e.g. someone like Von Neumann was probably a true genius, but Steve Jobs wasn't.
i think the problem is most people are raised in ways that are very restrictive, because society works that way so people end up that way, thus parents end up that way and that's what they transmit to their children. we are taught from a young age that pretty much everything we actually want to do is wrong, and the boring, predictable, pre-structured things are right. if you are not very resilient to this system, you will grow up with an innate resistence to thinking or doing anything outside of this framework. anything that sounds too crazy or out of the norm will not even be given a serious thought, even if you have living examples of their efficacy.
i guess it's mainly fear. fear of doing something that is outside of the ruleset you've lived your entire life with. conformism basically. the typical reaction to giving a solution to a problem that seems unsolvable is to laugh it away, because the solution sounds so outlandish that it's taken as a joke. but then whoever actually attempts that "joke" is regarded as a genius. all they had to do was go through with the joke though. for example the other day at the table my grandma was talking about how worried she was about insecurity or whatever (3rd world country here), so i say "well you can just move to miami then", and she responds by LAUGHING, subsequently IGNORING the proposal. of course i was half-joking, but at the same time it's not a goddamn joke. she has so much goddamn money, extremely privileged compared to most of the population here, what's stopping her from actually moving to a 1st world country? her family and whatever sure, but what about 15 or 20 years ago, when she was also complaining about the exact same things, but wasn't as old? if the solution is so clear, why don't they take it seriously?
It's amazing how people just lock up completely against things they aren't experienced in. As you say even for things that are really simple. The knowledge, even if you show them the steps and they actually DO the thing and write their own step by step guide. The next time they need to do it they still call for your help! And it doesn't matter that they're people who are capable and confident in quite complex tasks otherwise. There's just some strange thing that happens in the brain completely blocking their ability to take in something new.
Obviously I CAN'T do THAT because I'm lazy as hell man!
What exactly was his advice for game development and learning programming?
I learned programming but I wonder what I might have skipped that prevents me from being as good as him.
the advice he gives is simply to put in the time. there really is no magic trick to getting better, just practice.
Just ass-in-chair time, need to code, mess up, fix, repeat for the rest of your career, even Jon is still improving everyday
Time matters greatly, yes. But I think the other two people are glossing over the complementary advice to seek challenges that further your abilities, understanding and goals. Stay curious and don't settle. I think that's also what's required to [reach your own limits].
Maybe look at videos of him programming that are on his youtube channel, I learn things by looking at others sometimes.
@@CianMcsweeney This is absolutely it, and what beginners who want to improve fast need to understand. Don't spend hours designing a program. Just pick a project and code, code, code.
Edit: Just in case anybody reads this, I do NOT mean writing a lot of code without running it. Always try to run your code often to make sure it works. If you think you need to write hundreds of lines before running the program, because there was no way to break it down into smaller chunks, you're probably wrong.
But is there a framework for that? XD
I think whilst people don't wanna be outliers, people also don't wanna be typical. So when you say, for the majority of people X will work, they don't wanna see themselves as generic and typical, so they might suggest something won't work because they think they need a special process. Where all they really need is to realise they aren't special and just listening and trying the advice given by people who accomplished the thing they want to also accomplish might actually work. But this will only work if you give it a solid try, not a "well okay then, fine! I'm not special, I'll try your stupid way and find out" and then wonder why they inevitably fail anyway.
4:19 some of it was talent tbh.
It doesn't matter if you have talent or not, you have to put the time in regardless, some people will learn faster but if you like the thing you do, then you won't stop even if you knew for a fact you don't have a specific talent for that thing.
There are people less smart and talented than you enjoying more success because they have balls to go for it over a long time period.
@@ramireiniUnless you're a 90-100 IQ person who likes programming. Then you're screwed - you'll spend decades on it and get nowhere.
TBH though, people rarely like doing things they're terrible at, so the odds of this happening is not that high.
Also being able to fail for a long time many times in a row with seemingly no benefit is inherited and upbringing. Like even if free will is real, your stats are almost set in stone when you are an adult
I agree that there are talent and IQ (genetic) floors that many people cannot overcome. The thing that bugs me is that many people overestimate how much of these things you need to be successful. One likely needs to be in the 99.99th percentile to win a Fields Medal, but people who are "just" above average can find much more success than they realize if they work their asses off. The reality is that most above average people never try, and this is fine because living a normal life with a solid job that pays well is a good way to live.
I think the outlier argument is less true than the fact that it’s just hard to persistently do something for more than a couple of days. Most programmers want to be really good, so they actually want to be outliers.
The people who say “I can’t do that” are right. They have a realistic assessment of their own abilities. Intelligent people underestimate how difficult abstract reasoning is for the majority.
So pretentious
Not true at all. I'm not smart. I suck at arithmetic, my memory is terrible, I struggle with keeping more than 1 thing in my head at once. I struggle with reading so much that I've only ever read 1 novel in my entire life because it takes me 3 attempts to read each sentence.
But I loved computers, and I use to pretend to be a game developer and make adventure games in paint programs that were just pictures in a paint program. But as I spent all my time wanting so badly to do things that were outside my abilities, I just kept trying to solve problems on my computer.
I eventually figured out that in programming, you have to keep breaking things down more and more to understand concepts and solve problems. Anything slightly complicated was well beyond my ability, so I had to break things down until they were as simple as 1+1. I would spend so much time trying to get the computer to do what I wanted and was determined to do so.
People now tell me I'm a great problem solver and a great programmer, and people hire me to do 5 people's jobs. I still think I'm nothing special, but I put in the time to pursue something that I was truly interested in, and eventually got there.
Okay, so maybe the people who say "I can't do that" are right after all. Because they're not deluded enough to put in the time to actually try, and fail, and try, and fail, until they get somewhere.
I would say J Blow's point applies.
I would say that accounts for a lot of cases, but probably not for most of those people who also watch Jon Blow's gamedev content. That itself betrays a certain level of esoteric interest in the finer details of game development philosophy and programming culture that someone with no ability at all is unlikely to care about.
@Ironically-Sarcastic you're almost certainly smart because the average person is dumber than you think
All I'll say about the "normal people thing"... is that IQ matters... quite a lot actually.
"What you do is you say, okay, this is a problem, how do I solve it? You don't say, I can't do the thing because there's this problem."
Such a good quote, and highlights an important difference in mindset.
The problem is more thinking that someone else has done it - and worse, done it better - and also that it's so incredibly hard as to realistically be pretty much impossible unless I dedicate many years of time and resources to it, and then often both of these at once :/
Pffff, ask the dude about communism and he will say: "Look at all the countries that had communism!" - all he said just don't apply to things, that he doesn't like. He immediately jumps to "there is a problem so you can't do that" instead of "problem is a problem, that need to be solved". He just decided, that it isn't possible, and don't think about it. He straight up saing, that you cannot build rocket, because some people tried and rockets fell.
Moral of the story: sometimes people who believe they can't do something can and sometimes people who believe they can do something can't.
What a waste of 6 minutes
name 11 programming languages he made
That's like asking someone to name 11 planets God made :)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldilocks_principle