I've heard it said (maybe by Frank Zappa? can't remember for sure) that the difference between a professional musician and an amateur is not how well they play at their best, but how well they play at their worst.

The hardest part about professional music, is that you have to perform at a schedule. It takes a lot of effort to perpare your body physically and mentally for peak performance ... and often-times you just fail. Have a bad day. That happens.

There will be many concerts, where you are just at 70% of your peak ability.

As a professional musician, you have to make sure your 70%-version is good enough that people gladly pay for seeing it.

>As a professional musician, you have to make sure your 70%-version is good enough that people gladly pay for seeing it.

Or you just do electronic music, so that's not an issue!

A lot of live electronic music performances involve some pretty serious showmanship.

One of my favorite "laptop DJ" moments -

I saw Brock Hampton at a festival in 2018. Hadn't heard of them before, and they were described to me as a boy band so I had low expectations. Their performance was bizarrely wonderful - they were all painted blue and wearing orange jumpsuits. Anyways, they have a DJ with a Macbook and a bunch of rappers. At one point mid-song they have a bar of silence, and I swear I saw the DJ lean forward and hit spacebar to pause the track and then resume it after.

Showmanship, yes, which is different that musicianship and needing your "70%-version" of the musical performance to be "good enough".

Also, a lot of other live electronic music performances have almost zero showmanship, so there's that too.

(Speaking as an electronic musician)

to be fair, a lot of them are just pushing a play button as well

my personal favorite (which I don’t know where I picked up from is): the difference between good programmers and average programmers is in how they cut corners. average ones will mostly walk themselves into a corner where the amount of effort required to fix it means it will never get fixed. good programmers will leave it such a way that it can be improved/fixed given more time.

There is a statement very like this, about construction workers--masons or carpenters--in Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language.

need to check it out. thank you.

This is similar to skateboarding. If someone wants to go from zero to landing one kickflip in a couple of days, he can (albeit a terrible one), yet while the best skateboarders may very well miss their tricks more often than videos would make you think, but their overall consistency is incredible. When one lands a trick for the first time, the saying goes: "Two to make it true".

Really awesome seeing someone talk about skateboarding here on HN as it relates to the subjects covered by Knuth in this article. I grew up skateboarding and I credit the years those years with a huge amount of learning I didn't even know I was doing.

To expand upon what you said: it's amazing when you take that trick, a kickflip for example, and you're so confident in your consistency, that you apply it to something new. Kickflip to rock to fakie, kickflip down a set of stairs, kickflip to 50-50, and so on. The consistency you gain from that trick opens up the door to a whole new world of combinations.

There's so much about skateboarding, the culture (or counter culture in some cases) around it that translate so well to programming/hacking (and life in general). The trials of learning something new. The acceptance and overcoming of failure. The respect you shown and earned when you're at the park and you or someone else puts down a sick trick.

One of my favorite creative minds in skateboarding, Rodney Mullen, talks a bit about the relationship between hacking and skateboarding in his TED talk. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GVO-MfIl1Q&t=683

Amateurs focus how to get things right, Professionals focus on how to make sure things aren't/don't-go wrong.

That’s still saying talent is awesome. A metaphorical chess player who can beat you half asleep probably has both a high minimum and maximum.

Actually that makes sense with extreme sport even more so.

"An amateur practices until he can do a thing right, a professional until he can't do it wrong." -- (probably by) George W. Loomis

This is interesting and very true. It reminds me of people who are excellent at something but their life gets held back by alcohol/drugs or bad relationships or some other _low minimum_.

That first sentence is really profound in my opinion.

You've never experienced good art by a tortured artist, then?

That would be success in art but failing in life, by the quote definition, I infer he’s equating success in life with your minimum quality of life indicators being as high as posible, if I got it right.

That's how I read it also.

Take for example Kurt Cobain (whatever you think of him and his music). He had major success in music, but his life was a disaster and not something I'd hope for a loved one.

I do agree that it seems like the best art is created by "tortured artists".

Do you think he'd be ok with the opposite - a bland, contained and long life?

What is life for? There are fundamental questions here and I don't think the answers are obvious as you seem to think.

Tortured artists have produced some great work, true.

J. S. Bach had some hardships in his life, but he wasn't tortured.

J. R. R. Tolkien, similarly, was not tortured.

da Vinci's life doesn't seem to have been horrible either.

I think they stand as strong counterexamples to the idea that tortured artists make the best art.

Tolkien wasn't tortured, but he fought in WWI.

I guess people (particularly Tom Shippey, IIRC) do argue that's a lot of what made his work what it is. I tend to forget about that part of his history.

Certainly it would have been a traumatic experience.

Definitely a relevant point. Thanks for mentioning it.

Is their art good because they are tortured, or despite being tortured? People tend to assume the former, but it's unclear why the latter cannot be true.

Interestingly a lot of the self-helpy books coming out recently say the opposite: that investing effort into improving strengths has a higher return than improving weaknesses.

Initial impressions are driven by strength while lasting impressions are formed by your weaknesses. So building up those strengths will get you the job offer, but bolstering your weaknesses is what gets you the promotion.

I also heard that McKinsey adheres to that strategy when investing in training for their employees. Though that is only hearsay and it doesn't mean anything, they could also be wrong. But I think you are right when saying that the opposite approach also has a lot of followers right now.

I suspect what's best for an employer isn't necessarily the same as for an employee. Big employers want specialisation and obedience. That's fine while the demand is there but the narrower your specialisation the less the market needs to move to make you obsolete.

That doesn't relly make sense. Everyone's minmum is 0 (or negative) at something.

Knuth is famously proudly terrible at email and "keeping on top of things". Does that make him a failure? Of course not.

Knuth isn't "terrible" at electronic mail or keeping on top of things. He used electronic mail for decades. He's old. He doesn't want to use it anymore. So he doesn't.

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html

Well, one way to raise your minimum is by cooperating with other people so that they help out cover your minimum, you do theirs.

This is why it's important to identify your weaknesses. Once identified they are no longer weaknesses but areas to work on.

I've heard that it's better to leave weaknesses be and instead utilize your strengths. The reason is because if you just work on your weakness, you end up being just mediocre.

What's your opinion on this?

> it's important to identify your weaknesses. Once identified they are no longer weaknesses but areas to work on

As Tevye might say, You're right!

> it's better to leave weaknesses be and instead utilize your strengths

You're right!

> They can't both be right.

You know, you are also right.

- - -

Or maybe this illustrates that overly simplistic "solutions" to the complexities of life are just that... overly simplistic, that is, not solutions.

It depends what they are. Early in my career I was told I was too introverted and I took that on board. Looking back I think should have told those people to fuck off.

That's a lot different from having a shallow understanding of some technology you use or not understanding your employers business that well.

My opinion is that you can do both. Working on your weaknesses doesn't mean ignore your strengths.

Are you all claiming that people with one-hit wonders aren't succesful? Like yeah, Baauer isn't especially talented but he's going to be remembered forever for "Harlem Shake"

Same with Sir mix-a-lot and baby got back.

They have some pretty low minimums.

If you make one great work - you can coast on that forever.

One hit wonders are statistical flukes. They seem to achieve something by being at the right place at the right time and delivering an amazing performance.

I remember Harlem shake is a thing but can't remember who Baauer is. I know about Sir Mix-a-lot, but couldn't recall any of his tune.

I think you need more than great work to get me remembered forever.

The Beatles certainly achieved that, in year 3000 some people will probably talk about them. I'm not so sure about Vanilla Ice.

How about defining your own idea of success in life?

Taking your utility function, your definition of success, from someone else, is only one step removed from being jealous of someone on Instagram.

Think, and judge, for yourself.

Oddly, this comment seems mainly to put down the GP precisely for thinking and judging for themselves.

Please allow people to like and utilize the good ideas of others. Thankfully, we don't have to invent every wheel we use.

If you meet the Buddha on the road ...

It's true we don't have to invent every wheel. But it's also true that we don't have to treat invented wheels as gospel. There's more than one standard for living a good life, which depends on the person.

Eh. The direction irked me, smacked too much of an objective measure of people's lives.

> Think, and judge, for yourself.

But surely also be inspired by others? OP simply said "I like this". I agree we shouldn't blindly follow or resent others, but that seems a stretch from "like".

can someone mind ELI5 "the high minimum, high maximum"

Based on similar things he's said in many previous interviews, I think you should read "success in life" as "happiness in life", etc: read the quote as something like: A person’s happiness in life is determined by having a high minimum, not a high maximum. If you enjoy something a lot but there are other things which make you miserable, the latter will hold you back. But if almost everything is enjoyable (or at least tolerable) to you, then you’ve got a good life. — see the example from the article where he got uniforms to make toilet-cleaning more fun.

interesting interpretation. I guess, sometimes you need to know the author to understand what they meant more than what they say.

He probably meant an attitude towards life; giving your best effort to even the most mundane task to get the best out of it. That would also elevate your success in what you do best, and your satisfaction in life in general.

the original quote lost its full context and is giving the wrong meaning. knuth is trying to tell us to find joy in the most mundane things we do. he gave the example of cleaning the toilet, which his family does wearing suits.

solving top problems in quantum mechanics is, by any means, no mundane task.

but i have heard similar quotes before. about the joy of doing something being more important than the result. i think it's because joy is so contagious. shared joy makes you even happier, imo.

There is a De-motivational Poster from back in the day with a picture of a skier doing an airborne yard sale. Captioned with 'If you can't learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly'

A diamond right there.