**Malcolm Gin ☵** @perigee · Apr 11, 2017, 01:48

**Malcolm Gin ☵** @perigee · Apr 11, 2017, 01:48

Malcolm Gin ☵ @perigee

Apr 11, 2017, 01:48

Musing about talents and skills Show more

There's basically only one thing I've so far done in my life that I do regularly and keep in practice doing, for about 40 of my 48 years: knife sharpening. I'm at the point of mastery, now. I can usually get a knife razor or near razor within 5 minutes or so, assuming it ever had an edge, using a combination of surfaces like rocks or the bottoms of ceramic bowls and plates. If I have my sharpening stones and other supplies, maybe 2 minutes.

**Malcolm Gin ☵** @perigee · Apr 11, 2017, 01:50

**Malcolm Gin ☵** @perigee · Apr 11, 2017, 01:50

Apr 11, 2017, 01:50

Malcolm Gin ☵ @perigee

Musing about talents and skills Show more

I feel like if I were that good at development (I'm not - I've done development on and off throughout my life, but only been paid to do it maybe 5 or 6 years out of the more than 20 I've been in IT), I would be able to roll my own library in any language without really thinking about it. I know or have programmed in a shitload of languages, starting with BASIC and 6510 assembly, and going out to MongoDB and golang, but never really stuck with one for ver long.

**Malcolm Gin ☵** @perigee · 2017-04-11T01:52:12Z

Malcolm Gin ☵ @perigee

Musing about talents and skills Show more

I feel like there certainly must be some folks who have development as a talent. They know how to assimilate (like I did with the Japanese method of knife sharpening, which was new to me 3 or 4 years ago, but which I assimilated after 2 or 3 practice runs) new techniques like OO development, or functional programming, or TDD, by just sort of reading about it, maybe watching a video, or some other quick thing, and then just being able to do it.

Apr 11, 2017, 01:52 · Web · 0 · 0

**Malcolm Gin ☵** @perigee · Apr 11, 2017, 01:54

**Malcolm Gin ☵** @perigee · Apr 11, 2017, 01:54

Apr 11, 2017, 01:54

Malcolm Gin ☵ @perigee

Musing about talents and skills Show more

My run up with a new language is usually more like a couple of days. Or a week, but included in that is systems engineer stuff too. I spent maybe 8 or the last 10 years as an implementing and maintaining systems engineer for server farms. So when I start programming in, say, Python, I want to know how to set it up on my web host, how to set up TDD, how to use git to deploy it, etc. So that's part of my run up, especially now while I'm a full time student.

**Malcolm Gin ☵** @perigee · Apr 11, 2017, 01:55

**Malcolm Gin ☵** @perigee · Apr 11, 2017, 01:55

Apr 11, 2017, 01:55

Malcolm Gin ☵ @perigee

Musing about talents and skills Show more

A lot of folks will tell you that a talent is irreplaceable, but I think, both from my cultivation of knife sharpening skills, and also from my experience in tech, that you can replace talent with a good 20 - 30 years of practice, every few months, or maybe having a full time job with it for 2 or 3 years. Maybe 5, for the really advanced stuff.