I find it very hard to characterize myself, I constantly struggle with it. I enjoy starting things and don't like finishing/maintainging other peoples code especially if I cannot see their philosophy.
When trying to figure out where my limits are I found out another characterization:
- fastness
- deepness
- input bandwith
- memory (forgetfulness)
Compared to an average person I am good enough in all of these, but compared to A players I am bad in all of them except deepness. Compared to the very best I am slow to learn a new technology, slow to solve problems on the whiteboard in real-time, I have to re-learn things because I have partly forgotten them, and I am not especially fast in learning other people's theorems, proofs, and algorithms. I ocnstatnly find lots of stuff bullsiht and I constantly question basic beliefs, so I am slow at processing outer information. What I am quite good at is getting a challenging task and thinking about it for a lot of time refactoring my thoughts hundreds of times until I come to interesting insigths. Not that I am that good at it, but I have huge patience for this, because this is what I enjoy. It is more than enjoying this: my brain needs this as a drog. My brain pretty much likes to be detached from the outer world for long-long sessions.:)
When solving easy tasks this does not come out. But when pushing my limits I experience these weaknesses / strongness.
Would you please expand on your four characterizations, explaining what this quality is, what it makes someone good at, and maybe an example persona that exemplifies it?
The four adjectives don't immediately create images in my mind of what qualities they represent.
This can be measured by giving the person a not too hard (but not completely trivial) algorithmization problem, and see whether he/she can solve it in 15 minutes. Someone 'fast' is usually very good at competitions or at interviews excercised by companies where interviews are quite intense like Google.
deepness:
This basically means that given a much harder problem than the previous one, how the person solves it given lots of time. This is different than the previous one. Can he come up with a quite original "theory"/(thought system)? How fast a ray tracer he can write in 3 months? How good domain specific language he can come up with for a tricky domain in 2 weeks? (vs. writing the implementation for the Dijstra algorithm in 30 minutes without mistakes, which is 'fastness')
- input bandwith
How fast you can read a reasonably dense technical/algorithms/math book. How fast you understand other people's nontrivial ideas? This is not totally the same thing as how fast you come up with an idea, or how good an idea you come up with yourself.
- memory (forgetfulness)
How big a system / requirements spec. document can you hold in your head? If you used C++ 3 years ago, do you need to re-read the book 'The C++ Programming language' or you remember more or less everything? If you look at your previous comments on Hacker's News, are you suprised by some information in your own comments or you remember more or less everything?
This makes more sense. Thanks for the explanation. I like "fastness" and "deepness". I've definitely noticed a difference between people who are best at getting things done under time constraints but procrastinate anything longer (myself) and people who will do a great job if given enough time but which choke under pressure (my wife). I never really tried to name the two though.
Your system almost sounds like the two sides of two different things. On the one hand you have the ability to get things done: the ability to get a lot done quickly and on-the-spot and the ability to get things done meticulously and precisely if given the time. On the other hand you have the ability to learn things quickly and precisely remember them.
I might call it velocity vs. precision in the two areas of production and learning.
When trying to figure out where my limits are I found out another characterization:
- fastness
- deepness
- input bandwith
- memory (forgetfulness)
Compared to an average person I am good enough in all of these, but compared to A players I am bad in all of them except deepness. Compared to the very best I am slow to learn a new technology, slow to solve problems on the whiteboard in real-time, I have to re-learn things because I have partly forgotten them, and I am not especially fast in learning other people's theorems, proofs, and algorithms. I ocnstatnly find lots of stuff bullsiht and I constantly question basic beliefs, so I am slow at processing outer information. What I am quite good at is getting a challenging task and thinking about it for a lot of time refactoring my thoughts hundreds of times until I come to interesting insigths. Not that I am that good at it, but I have huge patience for this, because this is what I enjoy. It is more than enjoying this: my brain needs this as a drog. My brain pretty much likes to be detached from the outer world for long-long sessions.:)
When solving easy tasks this does not come out. But when pushing my limits I experience these weaknesses / strongness.