Rushing

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

Quoting from Peter Norvig’s piece, linked above:

" As Auguste Gusteau (the fictional chef in Ratatouille) puts it, “anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great.” I think of it more as willingness to devote a large portion of one’s life to deliberative practice. But maybe fearless is a way to summarize that. Or, as Gusteau’s critic, Anton Ego, says: “Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”

So go ahead and buy that Java/Ruby/Javascript/PHP book; you’ll probably get some use out of it. But you won’t change your life, or your real overall expertise as a programmer in 24 hours or 21 days. How about working hard to continually improve over 24 months? Well, now you’re starting to get somewhere… "

I’m not all that confident the Ratatouille quote does a great job of conveying the idea that there are some things that simply can’t be rushed, yet are well worth waiting (and working) for… but who can object to a well-intentioned reference to an adorable cartoon rat with a great story?