Comments on: Some Things l Need to Know about Programming I Learned In Music College

By: steve.freeman

steve.freeman — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:58:05 +0000

@Robert. One of my early teachers said that if all his students did what they were capable of, he’d be out of a job…

By: steve.freeman

steve.freeman — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:57:24 +0000

@Dave I recently saw an excellent documentary about the Berlin Philharmonic on tour. The surprise was that they’re all geeks, they were all not in the popular crowd at school and are quite open that they worked on their performance skill to gain status. The principal horn talked about being humiliated by messing up during a recital at music college.

One critical difference, of course, is that they kept going — which fits nicely with Carol Dweck’s work, which I’ve just started reading. And Atul Gawande writes in “Complications” that surgery schools look for tenacity rather than facility when recruiting on the grounds that tenacity is what really makes the difference and cannot be taught.

By: Robert Chatley

Robert Chatley — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:54:57 +0000

My violin teacher used to say two things, one was “good technique is about good habits”. If you keep doing the little things, they just become innate and then you always do them without even thinking about them. The same is true of bad habits too of course.

The other was “just play better”. He meant, you already know what you’re doing wrong – just have a think about it and fix it yourself.

When you play in a section that’s really good, it pulls you up. You catch little bits and pieces from the people around you subsconciously and copy what they do.

When you play in a poor section, you sometimes can’t be bothered to play your best, because you know it won’t make that much difference overall. Maybe you try to lead the others a bit, but maybe they aren’t paying any attention, busy staring at the dots in front of them.

By: David Harvey

David Harvey — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 13:31:26 +0000

Great thoughts, Steve. I think it’s no coincidence that the world of really good developers seems to have more than its share of really good musicians too – the ability to focus on something for a period of some hours, and the practice of practice (listening, self-awareness, reflection, correction, experiment), both translate.

I suspect we’re going to hear a lot more about this, following the Gladwell 10,000 hours thing (though this has been known about music for some time – I remember talking to John Sloboda about this in the 80’s/early 90’s, following a big research program. The only significant difference between musicians who’d made it as pros and those that had dropped out or not quite got to the top was the hours of playing put in in the early teens or before).

The hours and the hard work are important, but what’s always struck me is that to master anything you must want to master it (and the why of that wanting is an interesting psychological question in itself). That’s the difference between the kids who practice their pieces or sit in their bedrooms for hours trying to work out a Clapton riff, and those who’s rather watch TV, surf, or kick a ball around. Likewise the programmers who learn new stuff by doing all the exercises (like, you really have to have done the exercises in SICP or Knuth!), and the technology skimmers and fanboys who seem to make it a point of honour never to work with a language or environment beyond its 0.6 release, and never develop anything more complex than a shopping basket…

By: GettingAgile.com » Blog Archive » Some Things l Need to Know about Programming I Learned In Music College

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:38:43 +0000

[...] Freeman provides this article on how playing music relates to [...]

By: steve.freeman

steve.freeman — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:10:41 +0000

@John I’m not sure I thought of that, but I’ll always up for esteem-boosting

By: John

John — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:02:23 +0000

“Quality is fractal.”

What a fantastic way to explain it. Thanks.