Gladwell's paper was so explicit that I thought it couldn't possibly be true, despite the niceties of "We'd like practice to be important"
The best programmers (and martial artists, and runners, and basketball players) I personally know are the ones who practiced the most, but I've struggled with causation and correlation. They generally got early head starts, and kept plowing ahead.
That's possible, but it should also be easy to test, shouldn't it? Just measure how much people improve over time based on practice. Or how "naturals" compare to people who weren't very good at first, but kept practicing.
Competitive multiplayer video games would have this kind of data. Or even all types of video games.
The direction of causation is key. I think people with natural propensity (what you might call "talent") are more likely to practice hard than those who struggle to see results from their practice.
Gladwell's paper was so explicit that I thought it couldn't possibly be true, despite the niceties of "We'd like practice to be important"
The best programmers (and martial artists, and runners, and basketball players) I personally know are the ones who practiced the most, but I've struggled with causation and correlation. They generally got early head starts, and kept plowing ahead.