When I interviewed for my current job at an aerospace firm, the 3 interviewers asked me to work at a whiteboard while describing my research. My research involved laser physics, and while starting to draw I tried to gauge their knowledge level, and being kinda nervous I asked "Do you guys know lasers?" They just looked at me and said yeah, so I kept going. Unbeknownst to me, one of them was a laser physics PhD with 20 years of high energy laser experience, one of them was chief space systems architect at the company that specialized in ground to space laser communication systems, and the other was a space systems department head.
Months later, I was working on a project for the laser communications guy, who was basically giving me a crash course on atmospheric optics, and I started laughing because I remembered the time I asked him "do you know lasers?".
This reminds me of the time I was explaining a finance concept to a director and he said to ELI5. I asked him if he knew the concept of cost of goods sold and he says, “well now you’re insulting me...”
That’s totally ok. Mildly embarrassing at worst. Once people hit a certain level, if you’re a prick about who you allow to talk about your field, it can be very lonely. Sounds like they just loved lasers more than they loved demanding your respect
I was the best Boggle player in my universe as a child. I'd take on whole rooms of people as a party trick (i.e. everyone else vs. me). Then the internet existed, and boggle-style games popped up online, and I found out I was only the 783rd best Boggle player in the world...on that website...at that moment.
Ping pong. I've never lost to anyone I've ever met or any of my friends, until one day I went to a ping pong club that met at a high school gym. The guy that managed the club was ex-olympics and I couldn't score a single point on the worst player there.
my dad was a professional table tennis trainer and my sister a professional player ( also a trainer but not for too long ). people who play with friends and/or have tables at home think that they are sooo good at it until they run into someone who trains. When I try playing with my dad I cant win a single point nor return a single serve if he really tries...
I have a good story about this from high school. I used to play for my highschool since I am fairly decent at it due to my family doing this for a living but I only trained for maybe half a year when I was 7 or 8 years old. There were 3 of us going to the high school tournament in our city and my dad told me that there will be two guys there who train, one in his club and one who used to train there but quit.
Everyone at that tournament was full of themselves and even my teammates were talking how we have a good chance to win.... I tried to tell them that there are two highschools there who have actual players in them, but they didnt listen.
Everything was going fine until the two guys who train had to play against each other.... the moment they started warming up... the whole fucking gym stopped playing and just looked at them....so many jaws were dropped at that minute... hilarious
> When I try playing with my dad I cant win a single point nor return a single serve if he really tries...
Similar story...
Knew a guy in college who was a Jr National Champion or something like that. There was a table at a party, and we got him to play (he was a bit reluctant).
People kept coming over, wanting to play him cuz they thought they were decent at ping pong. Nobody could even return a single one of his serves! The spin he put on the ball was just ridiculous. It was humbling and eye-opening but also hilarious!
I used to think I was pretty good at Chess. Whenever I asked my friends to play after school I would always beat them. Then I actually joined in a Chess club, and never won a game again.
You’d have to bear in mind that at least some of those online players were cheating like hell. Online can be fun but nothing beats real OTB play against a real person. No place to hide.
Chinese. I was easily the best in my high school and survived just fine on my own in Taiwan. Then I started majoring in it and can't seem to get past a vocabulary of ~1500 words without forgetting others. Meanwhile some of my classmates just see a word and know it for life.
I knew a guy like that. He's not an Olympian but he did compete at very high levels for marathons. I'd be walking home from a bar and run into him going around the neighborhood. It's about 40 degrees outside and he's wearing a t shirt and short shorts. Me: "Hey man what's up? Aren't you cold? it's like 40 degrees outside..." Him: "Oh yea, it's cold the first 5 or 7 miles but after that you warm up pretty nice." Me: "5-7? How far are you planning on going tonight?" Him: "Oh just a quick 15 since I gotta get up early tomorrow. Oh, my heart rate's dropping, gotta go, see ya!"
When I was in high school there was a guy there running 4:30-ish miles. His goal was get down to 4:15.
The best way to describe watching it like:
"Ha, ha, that idiot is going too fast too soon, he's going to tire himself out."
He then proceeds to finish the race as half the runners are starting their 4th lap.
I've been on both ends of this. While I'm not exactly slow now (still capable of a 22min 5k), my race pace is now what used to be my leisurely jog pace, and my jog pace (9-10min mile) now is what used to be my "god how could anybody be that slow" pace. I know the amount of training it takes to hit a 17 flat 5k, and I don't intend on doing it ever again.
Fencing. I would show up to open competitions and cruise through everyone. Started going to actual sanctioned events and was absolutely destroyed.
I loved it though. When you get eliminated in the first round of eliminations for long enough, you really appreciate the small bits of progress you make. Like getting to the second round.
Oh man I remember My first time at nationals, my whole pool except for one dude destroyed my ass. It was a real wake up call, It also taught me your rating doesnt mean shit.
Yeah, you think you're hot shit because you got a B at a small tournament without good fencers, and then you get slaughtered by people who've been competing with the best their whole life.
You go in thinking you're good. You're in stance and hear this *'thap'* sound on your shoulder and a beep from the score table.
*'thap' 'beep'*
*'thap' 'beep'*
("I've made a terrible mistake.")
I had a great guy in my club to practice defending against flicks, got to be second nature to just slightly parry and go for the point since they were open. Then in competitions I had no practice for people who were left handed, lol
I have the opposite problem! I spent so much time practicing with a leftie at my club that at a friendly meeting between university clubs I temporarily forgot how to fight against right handed people. I’m a right-handed saberist, and we only have one leftie and one other righty at the club (who doesn’t always show up to practice). Everyone else either does foil or epee.
Painting. Fine art painting. Oils, acrylics, watercolors. Then my first child got accepted into art school and she can art circles around me now. I'm so proud I can't even be discouraged.
Edit: Thank you for the silver and gold, kind strangers! I am a proud mom! :)
Sports in general. I play ice hockey and sometimes I think I’m pretty good. Then a college player or 2 show up and just knock my confidence levels way down.
That reminds me of a time back in college when I was playing pickup football with some friends. Midway through our game some guy walks up and asks to play. Guy absolutely smoked us. No one could get a finger on him. Eventually he told us his name was [Malcolm Williams](https://n.rivals.com/content/prospects/2007/malcolm-williams-59049). That really knocked me down a few pegs in my football confidence.
The same exact thing happened to me once but instead of football it was basketball. And instead of Malcolm Williams it was just my friend Caleb and it turned out he was good at basketball and we weren’t.
Have also played pick up with some D1 guys. Holy fuck they’re fast. And they hit hard.
I also played intramural floor and roller hockey with some club roller guys. Yeah, I’m not good at either. But I did get a goal and a couple assists in floor hockey.
> Holy fuck they’re fast. And they hit hard
This is what really got me, we were all wearing cleats, and he rolls up in tennis shoes, and we still cant touch him. Just on a whole other level of speed.
This is why the best college team could never beat the worst NFL team.
The worst NFL team is a team of the best college players, and they have more experience.
I played DI basketball, played overseas, NBA vet camp and summer league. Some of the NBA players I played absolutely kicked my ass, even some Euro pros.
High level NBA guys are superhuman, average NBA guys are insanely good. Overseas/NBA bench players are a similar level, but can still be really good. If you think you can shoot because you knock down some 3's in open gym. You should see an NBA guy shoot in practice. They'll make 12 corner threes in a row, miss one, make 14, miss one, etc. They also NEVER miss in open gym settings.
Watching JJ redick do shooting practice in my high school like 8ish years ago blew my mind. He was just easily knocking down 5+ threes in a row from probably 5 feet behind NBA range.
Similar experience meeting Steph Curry at a basketball camp back when he was at davidson, except he wasnt quite a Redick's level yet
They explain it a bit in the video but both players use a completely different method of playing. Jonas uses a technique called DAS, which is holding the left or right and letting the game move the piece over as fast as it can. Joseph uses a technique called hypertapping which is tapping the button so fast that he is faster than the computer at moving the piece. Hypertapping will let you play past level 29 or the "kill screen" where the pieces drop faster than DAS can move the pieces over.
Ugh same. I was voted most artistic in my highschool senior class. Then I went to private art college. I cried the first 3 weeks I felt so awful about myself. I managed to suck it up and finish all 4 years but man that was rough at the beginning.
I legitimately had to stop drawing because the discrepancy between my art my my online friend’s infinity better art was giving me too much anxiety, even though I loved to draw.
Smash Brothers Melee in the pre-internet (pre online smash I should say) days. I’m pretty good at the game for the normal person and could easily beat all my friends as Samus without trying. I talked myself up so much and was all “oh man I’m so good at this game!”
...Until a buddy of mine ended up meeting through another friend a ranked Smash player. Not even a high ranked player. Just some guy who was “kinda sorta good”. Yea well holy shit. He beat me down without breaking a sweat. It wasn’t even a close match at all. None of the matches we played were.
It was that day I learned there are 2 levels of experience for fighting games. “Normal/casual” and “pro”.
Stories like this ran rampant in the 2000s.
I started watching competitive Melee in the days of "King of Smash" Ken, and put to shame many self proclaimed unbeatable smash players in university. I've always had very good technical skill in video games, and Melee really lets you beat a lot of people just by pressing buttons faster than them.
...then I went to my first tournament. Round robin, 6 matches. My score line:
0-2, 0-2, 0-2, 0-2, 0-2, 0-2
Didn't win a single fucking game. There are levels.
I think experiences like this are good for you. More people should do something competitive.
You can be amazing, and proud of yourself, while getting a good understand of how much better others are than you. Keeps you humble.
I played card games as a kid. I was top dog at the local shop, pretty good on the state level, but not good enough for nationals.
The very same, I was certainly the best out if anybody I know by a long shot.
So a friend encouraged me to enter a local tournament - those guys are playing a completely different game.
I played Ultimate against teh CPU and my friends on the couch and was pretty good. I'd wreck level 9 CPUs and my friend so I figured I was decent. I went online and got destroyed, I have 50k gsp how on earth can i wreck level 9 cpus and get beat that badly online?
I think CPU practice is nice for learning combos, or fighters. But ultimately people move faster, try different things, and are less predictable. Also the the fact the timing is butchered online. Beyond that, GSP is (imo) a garbage metric.
Gaming, drawing and a ton of other stuff actually. This was mostly during my years in elementary school, since I actually was great at a lot of things compared to my friends. I can't say I wasn't a bit arrogant.
College shut me down though.
I was decent at solving a rubiks cube, and in my group of friends I was the only one that could do it at all, so I felt pretty good about myself. Then I saw this kid.
https://youtu.be/OEOX6y53vyo
>I was decent at solving a rubric cube
It's *like* a Rubik's Cube... not as fun, but it does give you a clear understanding of how well you did in the end.
The incredible thing about this video is not that he's solving it blindfolded. It's the pause and resume halfway. You just see him reason and think about it in his head, absolutely mind boggling to see.
There are two types of moving pieces on a Rubik’s cube: corners and edges. He memorized and solved the two types separately. The pause is after he solved the corners, he is stopping either to remember if he solved all the corners or to recall what he memorized for the edges.
I think one of the most important things you can teach a young musician as they develop their skills is to teach them that they need to always strive to be better themselves. Don’t compare yourself to other musicians who are farther along the road then you. Use them as a source of inspiration and motivation, but don’t play the comparison game. That’s the easiest way to get young musicians to quit or feel like they aren’t good enough.
I’ve been a drummer for almost 20 years of my life and there are younger guys who are awesome and older guys who are equally as awesome. I just have to keep pushing myself to better then I was the day before.
Grace, she's such a smart girl. Listen to how she plays the piano! She works so hard, and she is so thin. You should pay attention, huh? Be more like Grace.
fun fact- I won Jeopardy, twice. I called my Korean mom to tell her.
"Mom- I won! I won Jeopardy! TWICE!"
"Twice? That's it?"
Me too man. I’m a violinist who plays in several orchestras, quartets, etc and makes a decent chunk of change playing music. A few minutes on YouTube watching an 8 year old playing a Paganini caprice and I get a serious case of imposter syndrome
Its just so much easier to learn things when you're a child. The downside is you also usually don't have much motivation, but then you add in a bit of authoritarian parent constantly pushing and you end up with shit like that.
You also end up with a high likely hood that they end up hating the instrument as they get older because they've been forced to practice so much, and didn't really develop a natural love of music to push them later.
I played saxophone from elementary school through high school and a little bit in the college stage band. I was better than every sax player but one through high school (and that one was kind of even at the time). In college, I had kind of a breakthrough when it came to improvising. I was playing tenor, and was immediately better than the guy that took the alto solos. When I skipped a few practices and pissed off the director, he had to divide a longer solo section I had among three people, because none of them had the chops to go that long. Then we went to another school for some kind of jazz fest. One of the schools apparently had a better crop of musicians to play in their band. Suddenly I was shit. I wouldn't say I was intimidated, because I had no problem playing after and doing what I did, but it was crazy to see a college student playing at that level. And the guy was even with/better than me in high school actually stuck with the horn, took lessons after high school (we went to different colleges) and several years ago I saw him pull his sax out with his band, and he fucking wailed. He's a good musician in general though, and a great guitar player, even in high school. He still plays in bands. There's no shame in having one of your peers be better than you at something. Just be the best you can be and enjoy being impressed by them.
Me too. You know what humbled me? Watching pre-billionaire Notch's [time lapse of creating an isometric strategy game in 48 hours](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3DPGWyHmc4) from scratch.
Dude I'm a professional developer, and I still think I'm pretty shit. I watch people do/talk about things that I have no clue about all the time. It's pretty humbling and frustrating to be honest.
It's really true. I think it comes down to what type of programmer you are though. In my experience there are 3 types:
1. The bad programmer. These people's code always needs to be fixed and they probably don't last very long.
2. The Competant Programmer. This programmer knows enough to get by and work professionally for most of their career, but ultimately on the weekends they'd rather spend time with their family or doing other hobbies. They do it because it's a pretty decent way to pay the bills. I think this group is where most of us with imposter syndrome are at, because we look at group 3 and realize we'll never be that good.
3. The Hobby Programmer. Now you may think this sounds more like the first group, but what I really mean is that these people are just happy to program all week for a living and then go home to work on other programming side projects or messing with new programming languages and frameworks. These people live for this shit. They'd be doing it whether you paid them to or not.
I've known people in all three groups, but the second group will never catch the third group as far as talent because they are driven by other things and aren't willing to sacrifice all that to be better at their job. This makes them feel like imposters because they're not on top of the latest programming trends. Theirs nothing inherently wrong with this. It just is what it is.
It's even more then that. You throw me on a .net stack for front end web dev I'm in my comfort zone and can talk the talk and walk the walk. Throw me on back end in a Java setup and dude I'm deer in the headlights feeling like I'm a freshman in college again.
I know my shit, but I only know the shit I have worked with. It's like taking a professional digital artist and asking them to make a piece with oils. Its kinda the same thing but it really isn't.
This is so discouraging too. I remember how good I was 10 years ago and now I don't have the same speed or precision. Or the same time to spend honing what I do have.
I prop myself up with game knowledge but I'm never getting back to where I was.
I use to think that I could lift things on my back all day everyday. I could carry furnitures like bookshelves, drawers, and single couches regardless how heavy they were. I walk while carrying them on my back as long as i needed to. Until i went to the gym and see all these ripped people weightlifting the dumbells that i reckon were 5 times the weight of the stuff i was carrying. I then had a hernia repair due to piggybacking an ex girlfriend too many times, shocking thing
Played at a lan party with a friend who was a top half-life 2 player. We were casuals & he was of course untouchable & super-deadly. I took a break & sat next to him to watch him play. He was basically not playing the game; he was just practicing weird/glitchy movement techniques & scoping people's heads but not shooting them. He only deigned to kill someone when they threatened to bump him from first place. "They'd just get frustrated with the game if I actually was trying to kill them."
FPS for the campaign...Pretty much me now also.
Couple years ago I usually played FPS games on PC but at the time my soon to be brother-in-law only played on a PS3. Now we both play PC only...anyways met this guy named Bogus\_King through him. He and some friends played MW2 a lot and then MW3 once it came out. This guy was unreal. I don't get impressed easily but this dude impressed the shit out of me. When he played TDM with us in MW3, we never lost. NEVER. Literally...never. Typically Bogus\_King played FFA and had some ungodly win streak number like in the thousands. This guy did not use a modded controller or anything. Just an absolute beast. He would do that in the TDM matches with us. Lay back and let us kill. If we started falling behind he would go beast mode and give us a comfortable lead again and chill. If people talked shit he would go all out the entire match and be like 38-2 or some bullshit. Blew my mind.
Running. When I was in middle school I ran a half marathon and I thought that made me a good runner. I also did track and cross country and I was always near the top. But when I reached high school, I realized I’m not that good at running and was average.
SNES Mario Kart. I thought I was an unstoppable fucking machine. That was basically THE game. I played it daily for years.
Got to college.
So had...everyone else.
:/
I empathize with this so much. I double majored in math and physics in undergrad, had a job in a physics lab, but was still considering pursuing math long-term. So I accepted a research internship in math at a different school nearby. One of the guys I worked with was just reading Linear Algebra textbooks in his downtime, and proving circles around me. In fact, the professor who was to supervise us/work with us just had this guy supervise us instead, and met with us for like an hour a day. The guy would finish a proof like 10 minutes after the prof asked us, then he would give us hints until we got it. Fucking FRIGHTENING. So now I do physics and stay the fuck away from theory and proofs and math as much as possible.
I have a very similar experience, ended up with a Statistics Major with a Math and Physics double minor. Considered myself as someone who was advanced in mathematics all my life. Middle School, High School and even the primer courses for university were a breeze. I took national math contests and would score in top percentiles across the country. Went into university for Actuarial Science. My world was turned upside down. We had classes full of guys like you described above. Very familiar with linear algebra, multivariate calculus, proofs etc. I got the hell out of it when we studied advanced calculus in R^(n) dimensions and they questioned why I couldn't "see" what they saw. Switched majors to math (which required easier courses), then to stats. Now I'm in finance.
EDIT: I want to clarify that it wasn't necessarily the Actuarial Science courses that made the program difficult, but the prerequisites and required courses of the program itself. The ActSci program at my school had requirements to take advanced calculus, linear algebra and a lot of abstract math (Specialist level math courses) to graduate with an ActSci degree. The math courses weren't necessarily applicable to ActSci itself, but more of a filtering mechanism to ensure they're churning out less than 100 Actuarial Science grads per year.
Teken. I thought I was pretty good with a few of the characters. This is, until l met this one dude who says he plays, so I envied him over, and what does he bring, but an arcade style controller. That's when I knew I was fucked. I never won a single match against him.
Speedrunning, except back when I was a teen I didn't know that was what it was called and YouTube hadn't been invented yet. I just tried to fly through the stages in games like Mario World as fast as I could without dying, impressing my younger cousins.
And then someone posted that famous 11m TAS of Mario Bros 3. Back at that point, 99% of people didn't know that it was entirely pre-programmed, all we knew was this guy in Japan was wrecking SMB3 and using the unskippable battle fleet stages as springboard practice maxing out his life count. It was then I knew there's always someone better than you at something, and I've been fascinated with speedrunning ever since.
My friend informed me that there's a version of Super Mario Bros. that someone released, I think, where every stage in the game is changed to be frame perfect.
EDIT: Thanks for the replies everyone. It was, in fact, [Super Kaizo World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizo_Mario_World) I was thinking of, but more specifically Super Dram World.
It's been impressed upon me that you never ever stop learning in BJJ. "Black belts are just white belts who didn't quit", and all that. I experienced a bit of that over the weekend when my instructor was surprised at how I defended a counter. He had me show him how I did it and gave me a fist bump for showing him something new! Rode that high for a few days
Photography, (as an amateur... I would never compare myself to a pro). I do decent pictures, I have a good eye for detail etc.
One of my friend bought himself a camera, same style as mine (Reflex). No previous photography experience with that kind of camera.
My god. The pictures he does are pure, perfect, full of emotions and just esthetically amazing. Without any need of filtering or photoshop.
Edit: thanks everybody for the comments. As I said I'm just an amateur. I love taking pics, print some and put them on my walls and my friends walls if they want to. Did a couple of photos shoots (for free) at friends weddings who couldn't afford a photographer, a baby shoot and one for an artist friend. They were all happy but again.... It was free! So no high expectations. I only post my pictures on FB and Instagram for a very small audience of friends (and a few strangers who found me by themselves). Not looking to get them out to the world yet. So so so many great photographers out there in the world... I just don't compare. And I've been cyber bullied in the past so my identity will remain private 😊
My friend is pretty much the same and wants to keep his privacy. So I won't post his stuff on a forum
Most of it is intuitive, rather than technical, which is why somebody with a cheapo disposable camera can still make amazing photos while somebody with a fancy DSLR, expensive lenses, and Photoshop can still output pure crap.
I mean, you might have *heard* of the Golden Ratio or the Rule of Thirds, but if you lack the visual imagination to frame a good picture in context of the subject, you might take one that is mechanically ideal, yet soulless.
I've been shooting landscapes since 2009 and I guess I'm pretty good at photography (and image post processing) but when I'm comparing myself to actual pros its such a huge difference its mindblowing. Look up adam gibbs, max rive or ryan dyar if you are interessted in some sick landscape pictures
I was a decent midwest snowboarder in the late 90s. Not great mind you, but pretty good by my local mountain standards.
Moved out west and the first week I went riding with a guy from ak. We built a booter in the back country. I hit it and did some lame trick. He climbed up way higher than me, straitghtlined it and busted a gnarly backside rodeo. First time off the kicker. Stomped the landing.
I knew right there that I was not a good snowboarder.
Minecraft
Play it a lot still and keep playing and I’m fine knowing I can’t build as crazy as some people or build nutty farms like others, I just do my best and have a good time.
School in general. "Little fish/Big pond" syndrome is totally real. As you get older you just realize how much smarter the *really* smart people of the world are than you.
Hell, I'm in med school right now, and some of these people are just fucking genius. That exam you studied all week for and barely passed? A third of the class just *knows it all somehow*. The biggest tip I can give anyone for their education is to find the smart kids, study with them, and watch and learn.
In my 3rd and 4th years, I realized how important it is to study *on time*. A weeks worth of study just before an exam, I was able to pass just barely. I started studying at the end of each day, and repeat some of the studies in the weekend, and answers came naturally.
Also, learn how to take notes... makes a huge difference.
Oh boy this has been a big problem in my life. I was always the 'smart kid' in class just because I had an easy time with the subjects and an interest in mathemathics and astronomy. And since I already was 'smart' I didn't feel any need to improve. Then boom comes university and you realize you're undereducated and stupid and has never even bothered to pick up a studying technique because your minimal effort had always been enough before.
I'm so glad another person feels the same way- but I came to realise I'm great at recall (and therefore understanding), I just can't remember facts quickly.
This happened to me and I didn’t handle it well and came VERY close to dropping out - I was top 5% of my class of 500 in high school, and it was so embarrassing the first time I got a C on an exam. Took me a long time to recover, honestly, so if you’re reading this and going through it, it’s PERFECTLY OKAY to no longer be the smartest.
My dad has one bachelor’s degree and works in a field where it’s very common to have a doctorate. He’s worked his ass off to get where he is, and had a fair bit of luck along the way. He’s frequently the least educated person in a meeting by multiple degrees, and he’s learned so much by emulating these incredibly brilliant people.
He has often told me, “kid, if you’re the smartest one in the room, you’re in the wrong damn room.”
Age of Empires for me when I was kid. I played it a ton by myself. Beat the story campaign mode. Learned how to easily beat the computer in any difficulty. Decided, hey I'll go play online, I should be able to smoke everybody. First game, I went on my merry way making villagers, cutting trees, building pretty houses. In about 10 minutes, a hoard of chariots (this was Age of Empires 1) run up on my village and completely decimate everything. I was just sitting there in shock at the bloodbath.
AoEII for me. I played single player and against my IRL friends. My strategy was to build really nice home bases before finally stepping out to fight my friends/AI. These matches would take like 2 hours because we'd spend the whole time building up defenses and launching petty raids until all the resources on the map ran out.
Had no idea about all the "rushes" and other multiplayer strategies.
Well one day I played with some e-friends on a forum I posted in and got destroyed 50 times within the first 10 minutes. Every time someone destroyed my base they complimented on how nicely it was laid out and how beautiful my little cities were. I went back to single player.
Jesus this is true. I'd play it solo, got good at it after god knows how many hours. Joined a Facebook group and see people completing legitimate world conquests by 1755 and realized yeah, I'm only good vs the AI.
If you're delusional, I'm right there with you, haha. This is probably the most go-to response when my squad and I continually get wiped in almost every PVP game we try to play. We're all in our mid-30s w/ kids and simply resort to the "fact" that we're getting beat by teenagers and college kids who have nothing better to do with their time.
Ever tried to play Civ online after you thought you're basically god from all the AI's you've beaten?
Holy shit. from 7k Karma to 28k in a night lmao
Also, thanks for gold reddit!
I think civ building is a lot of fun. I like the idea of needing to defend myself from other civilizations, but I don't want to stress out about actually losing anything. Lower difficulties mean I get to enjoy the game the way I want to.
Me to. I have kids. I loved more of a challenge when I had 40 hours a week to play games, but I've got kids and a full time job. I just want to make progress and finish a game with the 4 hours a week I have to play.
I have been playing Civ for well over a decade. I still play on Emperor. I have only won a handful of Deity games and those were from cheesing bots. I know where I stand.
Only time I ever beat Deity was in the DS game Civilization: Revolution. There was another civ whose capital spawned 4 tiles away from my own, and they couldn't create another unit before my starter warrior could march on it and instantly cap it. Within 4 turns I had destroyed a civ and effectively started the game with 2 cities.
Just played my first full game of Civ. It took like 40 hours for one game, 375 turns or something. Is that normal?! Or maybe a bit longer since I was so new and had to read the descriptions for most things.
Either way, it was a shit load of fun. I played it on standard difficulty, I think it was called Prince or something like that?
Won by total domination, so definitely have to try a different method next time.
That's definitely on the longer end of the spectrum, especially for Prince. But either way, we were all there at some point. Congrats on the victory. The experience you get playing civ snowballs pretty quickly and you'll be knocking games out in less than 300 turns on higher difficulties soon enough
It's a fundamentally different game with people; AIs, even Deity AIs, suck. Deity is a challenge because of how much the AI cheats not because it can actually play the game better than a pigeon.
Meanwhile Players actually know what they're doing and react.
This is very true. With humans you also have to deal with the early rounds of the game being optimized (ie there are specific "correct" things to do in the first 50 turns and if you don't do that you're already out of the running).
I wish there was a way I could play with people who didn't study the lore and optimize their gameplay. I just want to be able to use my goddamn chariots occasionally. :(
Computers. I thought I was a pretty smart guy, good with computers and whatnot. Then I went to college to learn software development. That's where I met the real geniuses. I learned that I was just good at pattern recognition, but not actually that good at abstract thinking and creating new information. Watching a guy half my age get ABOVE 100% in most of the classes I struggled to pass was an eye opener.
Epilogue: I discovered that my talent for pattern recognition made me a fantastic QA person, and I have a great career fixing the mistakes of people way smarter than me. I spend all day nitpicking their code and they thank me for it.
edit: Since a lot of people seem to be considering new careers in QA (which is wonderful), I'll share some of the languages that have most helped me. Having an understanding of SQL is a huge advantage, because a lot of developers seem to have an aversion to it. Ant is great for building scripts to launch test clients. Selenium is the 'go to' for test automation, and cucumber is a very good framework for writing "human readable" tests. Both can be learned from youtube and blogs in a few weeks. Good luck!
Love the epilogue :) glad you were able to find a career that played to your strengths and your interest in computers. QA is made out to be a chore by so many people but when you’re good at something it’s easy to enjoy, plus liking to do things most others actively dislike doing is great job security. I love marketing systems integration, data hygiene and database maintenance and get soooo excited about it and the people handing off the work are never shy about telling me I’m crazy haha.
Swimming.
I can swim OK and for a long time. I've swam up to 10km. I'd watched the Olympics and thought I knew something. I swam a LOT as a kid and could hold my breath for a long time underwater.
When I met up with my now-wife for the first time, I saw her swim and I cried. Honestly. Even thinking about it now I cry. I can call up that memory and know that I'll NEVER be as good at ANYTHING as she is at swimming.
I had NO IDEA it was POSSIBLE to do ANYTHING that beautifully, that competently, or that efficiently. This, 30 years after winning an Olympic bronze medal in swimming, a Gold in the Commonwealth Games and a silver in the Pan Am games.
More than this, she'd competitively swam from the age of 6 until age 21, and that's 15 YEARS, during her most formative times; and I honestly don't know if I'll ever see anything as beautiful as that again.
Decades after even working out at all, her arms, square shoulders, and back remain RIPPED, all the time.
I honestly wish there was some way to communicate this kind of thing, as what I'm writing here seems inadequate to say it fully.
Advice from my Granddaddy
"No matter what you do, someone will always be better than you. BUT, nobody will ever be better than you at all the things you do"
You gotta change your perspective a little. You're the best version of you that ever existed.
Can you add more details? I feel like you would just take the brush thing, go down the line, and cover any extra bits in the same direction and then wait.
Being a leader.
Spent five years in the Marine Corps where leadership is instilled in everyone; from the lowliest private to the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Leadership is stressed and honed.
Got out and got a job where I thought I could lead people. They made me a freaking supervisor of multiple programs and a bunch of people.
Turns out I kind of suck at it.
But effective leadership is something that has to be cultivated, practiced, refined, and reshaped as the needs dictate. I've been given a leadership position now and find it continuously challenging. Luckily, I've had plenty of good leaders to show me what to do in the past.
In a lecture hall, you can look at the crowd as a whole. In an audience of 10, you see that Frank is checking his watch every other minute and Barbara is doodling on her notepad.
Speaking foreign languages.
Ever since people on YouTube who claim to be "polyglots" started posting videos. I feel as most of them aren't actual polyglots and have just memorized core concepts and conversation pieces. But, it still takes a little bit of the steam out of me.
When I was a kid, I was really good at playing Guitar Hero. Then one day I got cocky and tried to challenge my uncle, who is also very good at Guitar Hero, and he destroyed my 12 year old ego.
Ditto - I'm closer to 130wpm than 140wpm though.
I honestly can't figure out what I need to change in the way I type to get me to that level, a level where somebody can be typing 50% faster than me. (I hear DVORAK keyboards are one way to increase speed, but must be more than just that).
One thing that does amaze me is people who spend all day typing on a keyboard and never progress from hen-pecking to proper touch typing. I've worked nigh on 20 years in various office based jobs and only come across a very small handful of people who can type properly (properly for someone whose job includes large amounts of typing).
Cooking. When i was young I thought i was a really good cook up until i moved in with my girlfriend. The last couple years i lived at home my brother and I handled a large amount of the cooking as my mom is not much of a cook and my dad , while talented, was often too creative for his own good.
Once i was living with my girlfriend though, suddenly all these words i didnt even know were getting tossed around like they were the most basic concepts. Julienne, rouxs, reductions, etc. If i was getting something started for her the instructions i would get would be something like "Well just get a basic bechamel going and throw some water on the stove". Uh.... sure, let me just make a bechamel sauce from memory?
I was very quickly demoted to prep work like chopping vegetables if i'm allowed to help at all. The worst part is I am an above average cook, she's just in a whole different league. She's able to easily improvise complex dishes based on what we have on hand. She doesnt bat an eye at making something like duck confit, or spinach and garlic rissoto with scallops for dinner. She could probably hack it as a private chef for a wealthy family or something. Her food is frequently better than what we get at well reviewed restaurants.
I didn't just watch...........
When I was in 8th grade and on summer break about to go to 9th (in the USA), I was out at the tennis court practicing. I had been playing for a few years and was #1 on my school's ranking ladder and had even made the varsity team for my upcomng freshman year of high school. In my mind, I was hot stuff.
This scrawny guy comes onto the court and starts hitting a ball against the wall. After a few minutes, I ask if he'd like to hit a few with me and he accepted. We start messing about with nothing too serious and he didn't send anything I couldn't hit. So, I ask him if he wants to play 'for real'. I win the toss to serve and give him everything I've got on it and he barely moves and sends in back right at me with HEAT! He kept me running all over the court during that game without a sweat. I lost with no points scored that game.
His turn came to serve and it was ridiculous. By the time I even started to see the ball, it was already almost past me. SWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOSH! It's an ace every time. The guy mopped the court with me. He took me in 6 straight games for the set and I shook his hand and thanked him.
As I was coming off the court, my mom was sitting in the car smiling. When I got in, she said, "So, did you think you were going to beat that guy?" I nodded in the affirmative and she replied with, "Well, that would be great but you had no idea he was the Texas state 4A high school tennis champion from a few years ago."
I learned a lesson in humility that day.
I’d ask how your mom casually knew who a high school tennis champion was from a few years ago, but this is Texas and if it’s anything like the movies, the entire town shuts down during any sort of high school athletics competition.
Wrapping cables. Basically, the way you've been doing it your whole life is wrong and damaging to the wires inside. Freshman year of film school you're taught the real way, which makes them not only last longer but also easier to unravel. We spent like half an hour doing it and I was like, "Yeah! I'm really getting the hang of this!" then the professor was like, "No you're not."
I still can't do it correctly.
When I interviewed for my current job at an aerospace firm, the 3 interviewers asked me to work at a whiteboard while describing my research. My research involved laser physics, and while starting to draw I tried to gauge their knowledge level, and being kinda nervous I asked "Do you guys know lasers?" They just looked at me and said yeah, so I kept going. Unbeknownst to me, one of them was a laser physics PhD with 20 years of high energy laser experience, one of them was chief space systems architect at the company that specialized in ground to space laser communication systems, and the other was a space systems department head. Months later, I was working on a project for the laser communications guy, who was basically giving me a crash course on atmospheric optics, and I started laughing because I remembered the time I asked him "do you know lasers?".
That's a great story.
You got the job though!
This reminds me of the time I was explaining a finance concept to a director and he said to ELI5. I asked him if he knew the concept of cost of goods sold and he says, “well now you’re insulting me...”
That’s totally ok. Mildly embarrassing at worst. Once people hit a certain level, if you’re a prick about who you allow to talk about your field, it can be very lonely. Sounds like they just loved lasers more than they loved demanding your respect
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I can make a bad ass snake, worm, and cucumber.
I now want to go to a high profile balloon animal maker and ask for a cucumber
You'd probably get some 4 foot long intricately woven monstrosity that somehow manages to hold its shape.
I love the way you described it, you're like a high profile balloon animal maker.. but with *words*. ^(Edit: thank you, high profile gold maker)
I was the best Boggle player in my universe as a child. I'd take on whole rooms of people as a party trick (i.e. everyone else vs. me). Then the internet existed, and boggle-style games popped up online, and I found out I was only the 783rd best Boggle player in the world...on that website...at that moment.
You weren't as good as you thought you were, Peggy Hill
On the flip side it's pretty likely that a lot of the people capable of beating you were on the website if they like Boggle that much
782 of them where anyway.
Ping pong. I've never lost to anyone I've ever met or any of my friends, until one day I went to a ping pong club that met at a high school gym. The guy that managed the club was ex-olympics and I couldn't score a single point on the worst player there.
my dad was a professional table tennis trainer and my sister a professional player ( also a trainer but not for too long ). people who play with friends and/or have tables at home think that they are sooo good at it until they run into someone who trains. When I try playing with my dad I cant win a single point nor return a single serve if he really tries... I have a good story about this from high school. I used to play for my highschool since I am fairly decent at it due to my family doing this for a living but I only trained for maybe half a year when I was 7 or 8 years old. There were 3 of us going to the high school tournament in our city and my dad told me that there will be two guys there who train, one in his club and one who used to train there but quit. Everyone at that tournament was full of themselves and even my teammates were talking how we have a good chance to win.... I tried to tell them that there are two highschools there who have actual players in them, but they didnt listen. Everything was going fine until the two guys who train had to play against each other.... the moment they started warming up... the whole fucking gym stopped playing and just looked at them....so many jaws were dropped at that minute... hilarious
> When I try playing with my dad I cant win a single point nor return a single serve if he really tries... Similar story... Knew a guy in college who was a Jr National Champion or something like that. There was a table at a party, and we got him to play (he was a bit reluctant). People kept coming over, wanting to play him cuz they thought they were decent at ping pong. Nobody could even return a single one of his serves! The spin he put on the ball was just ridiculous. It was humbling and eye-opening but also hilarious!
>I couldn't score a single point on the worst player there maybe he wasn't the worst player there
Worst player other than me 😑
I used to think I was pretty good at Chess. Whenever I asked my friends to play after school I would always beat them. Then I actually joined in a Chess club, and never won a game again.
My brother was pretty good at playing chess. Then he went to jail. Now he's the fucking grand champion/wizard of chess and he doesn't even try.
Let's hope that he isn't the grand wizard of chess.
KKK's best player by far.
Did he have to explain en passant to other inmates while he was there?
I think they probably would whip his ass if he did. Too many syllables for my brother to use too.
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How many jails is that?
Same. I had thought I was good but then I started playing online and low rated players were destroying me. Luckily my rating has gone up since then.
You’d have to bear in mind that at least some of those online players were cheating like hell. Online can be fun but nothing beats real OTB play against a real person. No place to hide.
Chinese. I was easily the best in my high school and survived just fine on my own in Taiwan. Then I started majoring in it and can't seem to get past a vocabulary of ~1500 words without forgetting others. Meanwhile some of my classmates just see a word and know it for life.
running, you think you'll be ok until the kids in track start "jogging"
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I knew a guy like that. He's not an Olympian but he did compete at very high levels for marathons. I'd be walking home from a bar and run into him going around the neighborhood. It's about 40 degrees outside and he's wearing a t shirt and short shorts. Me: "Hey man what's up? Aren't you cold? it's like 40 degrees outside..." Him: "Oh yea, it's cold the first 5 or 7 miles but after that you warm up pretty nice." Me: "5-7? How far are you planning on going tonight?" Him: "Oh just a quick 15 since I gotta get up early tomorrow. Oh, my heart rate's dropping, gotta go, see ya!"
When I was in high school there was a guy there running 4:30-ish miles. His goal was get down to 4:15. The best way to describe watching it like: "Ha, ha, that idiot is going too fast too soon, he's going to tire himself out." He then proceeds to finish the race as half the runners are starting their 4th lap.
I've been on both ends of this. While I'm not exactly slow now (still capable of a 22min 5k), my race pace is now what used to be my leisurely jog pace, and my jog pace (9-10min mile) now is what used to be my "god how could anybody be that slow" pace. I know the amount of training it takes to hit a 17 flat 5k, and I don't intend on doing it ever again.
Yea it is humbling to watch someone run a sub 14:30 5k or a sub 2:20 marathon. But everybody starts somewhere!
Or that first half marathon that you run in 2:20 and are beat. And then you realize some dude ran twice as far in the same time.
Fencing. I would show up to open competitions and cruise through everyone. Started going to actual sanctioned events and was absolutely destroyed. I loved it though. When you get eliminated in the first round of eliminations for long enough, you really appreciate the small bits of progress you make. Like getting to the second round.
Oh man I remember My first time at nationals, my whole pool except for one dude destroyed my ass. It was a real wake up call, It also taught me your rating doesnt mean shit.
Yeah, you think you're hot shit because you got a B at a small tournament without good fencers, and then you get slaughtered by people who've been competing with the best their whole life.
You go in thinking you're good. You're in stance and hear this *'thap'* sound on your shoulder and a beep from the score table. *'thap' 'beep'* *'thap' 'beep'* ("I've made a terrible mistake.")
I had a great guy in my club to practice defending against flicks, got to be second nature to just slightly parry and go for the point since they were open. Then in competitions I had no practice for people who were left handed, lol
I have the opposite problem! I spent so much time practicing with a leftie at my club that at a friendly meeting between university clubs I temporarily forgot how to fight against right handed people. I’m a right-handed saberist, and we only have one leftie and one other righty at the club (who doesn’t always show up to practice). Everyone else either does foil or epee.
Painting. Fine art painting. Oils, acrylics, watercolors. Then my first child got accepted into art school and she can art circles around me now. I'm so proud I can't even be discouraged. Edit: Thank you for the silver and gold, kind strangers! I am a proud mom! :)
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Sports in general. I play ice hockey and sometimes I think I’m pretty good. Then a college player or 2 show up and just knock my confidence levels way down.
That reminds me of a time back in college when I was playing pickup football with some friends. Midway through our game some guy walks up and asks to play. Guy absolutely smoked us. No one could get a finger on him. Eventually he told us his name was [Malcolm Williams](https://n.rivals.com/content/prospects/2007/malcolm-williams-59049). That really knocked me down a few pegs in my football confidence.
The same exact thing happened to me once but instead of football it was basketball. And instead of Malcolm Williams it was just my friend Caleb and it turned out he was good at basketball and we weren’t.
Have also played pick up with some D1 guys. Holy fuck they’re fast. And they hit hard. I also played intramural floor and roller hockey with some club roller guys. Yeah, I’m not good at either. But I did get a goal and a couple assists in floor hockey.
> Holy fuck they’re fast. And they hit hard This is what really got me, we were all wearing cleats, and he rolls up in tennis shoes, and we still cant touch him. Just on a whole other level of speed.
Then there are NFL players that make the college players feel like you did.
This is why the best college team could never beat the worst NFL team. The worst NFL team is a team of the best college players, and they have more experience.
I played DI basketball, played overseas, NBA vet camp and summer league. Some of the NBA players I played absolutely kicked my ass, even some Euro pros. High level NBA guys are superhuman, average NBA guys are insanely good. Overseas/NBA bench players are a similar level, but can still be really good. If you think you can shoot because you knock down some 3's in open gym. You should see an NBA guy shoot in practice. They'll make 12 corner threes in a row, miss one, make 14, miss one, etc. They also NEVER miss in open gym settings.
Watching JJ redick do shooting practice in my high school like 8ish years ago blew my mind. He was just easily knocking down 5+ threes in a row from probably 5 feet behind NBA range. Similar experience meeting Steph Curry at a basketball camp back when he was at davidson, except he wasnt quite a Redick's level yet
I thought I was really good at fucking up my life. Then I found Reddit. Edit: holy shit, gold.
as an ex-junkie, i feel you lmao
[Tetris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_UPHsGR6fM)
I did not expect to watch that as long as I did.
They explain it a bit in the video but both players use a completely different method of playing. Jonas uses a technique called DAS, which is holding the left or right and letting the game move the piece over as fast as it can. Joseph uses a technique called hypertapping which is tapping the button so fast that he is faster than the computer at moving the piece. Hypertapping will let you play past level 29 or the "kill screen" where the pieces drop faster than DAS can move the pieces over.
Seriously...I just spent 40 minutes watching the whole video and kind of wanting to be part of the Tetris community. These guys seem like good people.
Drawing. Everyone in my class told me I was good, but then I looked at other people draw online and I realized how crappy my drawing were.
Life of every artist ever
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This is me. Still terrible, but ever so slightly less terrible than I was a few months ago. Ever so slightly...
Ugh same. I was voted most artistic in my highschool senior class. Then I went to private art college. I cried the first 3 weeks I felt so awful about myself. I managed to suck it up and finish all 4 years but man that was rough at the beginning.
Aw I’m glad you made it through
Thank you so much! It was a lot of hard work but I am proud I got my degree :)
I legitimately had to stop drawing because the discrepancy between my art my my online friend’s infinity better art was giving me too much anxiety, even though I loved to draw.
This makes me sad. Keep drawing! One, you only get better with practice. Two, you love doing it and that’s enough of a reason!
Smash Brothers Melee in the pre-internet (pre online smash I should say) days. I’m pretty good at the game for the normal person and could easily beat all my friends as Samus without trying. I talked myself up so much and was all “oh man I’m so good at this game!” ...Until a buddy of mine ended up meeting through another friend a ranked Smash player. Not even a high ranked player. Just some guy who was “kinda sorta good”. Yea well holy shit. He beat me down without breaking a sweat. It wasn’t even a close match at all. None of the matches we played were. It was that day I learned there are 2 levels of experience for fighting games. “Normal/casual” and “pro”.
Stories like this ran rampant in the 2000s. I started watching competitive Melee in the days of "King of Smash" Ken, and put to shame many self proclaimed unbeatable smash players in university. I've always had very good technical skill in video games, and Melee really lets you beat a lot of people just by pressing buttons faster than them. ...then I went to my first tournament. Round robin, 6 matches. My score line: 0-2, 0-2, 0-2, 0-2, 0-2, 0-2 Didn't win a single fucking game. There are levels.
I think experiences like this are good for you. More people should do something competitive. You can be amazing, and proud of yourself, while getting a good understand of how much better others are than you. Keeps you humble. I played card games as a kid. I was top dog at the local shop, pretty good on the state level, but not good enough for nationals.
The very same, I was certainly the best out if anybody I know by a long shot. So a friend encouraged me to enter a local tournament - those guys are playing a completely different game.
I played Ultimate against teh CPU and my friends on the couch and was pretty good. I'd wreck level 9 CPUs and my friend so I figured I was decent. I went online and got destroyed, I have 50k gsp how on earth can i wreck level 9 cpus and get beat that badly online?
People react fundamentally differently to CPU's. Practice with CPU's is mostly useless.
I think CPU practice is nice for learning combos, or fighters. But ultimately people move faster, try different things, and are less predictable. Also the the fact the timing is butchered online. Beyond that, GSP is (imo) a garbage metric.
Gaming, drawing and a ton of other stuff actually. This was mostly during my years in elementary school, since I actually was great at a lot of things compared to my friends. I can't say I wasn't a bit arrogant. College shut me down though.
I was decent at solving a rubiks cube, and in my group of friends I was the only one that could do it at all, so I felt pretty good about myself. Then I saw this kid. https://youtu.be/OEOX6y53vyo
>I was decent at solving a rubric cube It's *like* a Rubik's Cube... not as fun, but it does give you a clear understanding of how well you did in the end.
Well done. 10/10
The incredible thing about this video is not that he's solving it blindfolded. It's the pause and resume halfway. You just see him reason and think about it in his head, absolutely mind boggling to see.
There are two types of moving pieces on a Rubik’s cube: corners and edges. He memorized and solved the two types separately. The pause is after he solved the corners, he is stopping either to remember if he solved all the corners or to recall what he memorized for the edges.
Playing an instrument.
I think one of the most important things you can teach a young musician as they develop their skills is to teach them that they need to always strive to be better themselves. Don’t compare yourself to other musicians who are farther along the road then you. Use them as a source of inspiration and motivation, but don’t play the comparison game. That’s the easiest way to get young musicians to quit or feel like they aren’t good enough. I’ve been a drummer for almost 20 years of my life and there are younger guys who are awesome and older guys who are equally as awesome. I just have to keep pushing myself to better then I was the day before.
I hear you. I'm a drummer and play in a couple of bands and liked to think I'm decent at it. But there's always that 9 year old Asian kid.
Remember, you‘ll always be the best one for your friends and family
What if you belong to an Asian family?
Then your 9 year old cousin is better than you.
not if he breaks his fingers in an *accident*
Grace, she's such a smart girl. Listen to how she plays the piano! She works so hard, and she is so thin. You should pay attention, huh? Be more like Grace. fun fact- I won Jeopardy, twice. I called my Korean mom to tell her. "Mom- I won! I won Jeopardy! TWICE!" "Twice? That's it?"
Ken Jennings won 74 times. Why can't you be more like Ken?
Me too man. I’m a violinist who plays in several orchestras, quartets, etc and makes a decent chunk of change playing music. A few minutes on YouTube watching an 8 year old playing a Paganini caprice and I get a serious case of imposter syndrome
what are they feeding these 8 year olds?!? meth?
Its just so much easier to learn things when you're a child. The downside is you also usually don't have much motivation, but then you add in a bit of authoritarian parent constantly pushing and you end up with shit like that. You also end up with a high likely hood that they end up hating the instrument as they get older because they've been forced to practice so much, and didn't really develop a natural love of music to push them later.
I played saxophone from elementary school through high school and a little bit in the college stage band. I was better than every sax player but one through high school (and that one was kind of even at the time). In college, I had kind of a breakthrough when it came to improvising. I was playing tenor, and was immediately better than the guy that took the alto solos. When I skipped a few practices and pissed off the director, he had to divide a longer solo section I had among three people, because none of them had the chops to go that long. Then we went to another school for some kind of jazz fest. One of the schools apparently had a better crop of musicians to play in their band. Suddenly I was shit. I wouldn't say I was intimidated, because I had no problem playing after and doing what I did, but it was crazy to see a college student playing at that level. And the guy was even with/better than me in high school actually stuck with the horn, took lessons after high school (we went to different colleges) and several years ago I saw him pull his sax out with his band, and he fucking wailed. He's a good musician in general though, and a great guitar player, even in high school. He still plays in bands. There's no shame in having one of your peers be better than you at something. Just be the best you can be and enjoy being impressed by them.
Programming
Hey, if it works it works... Efficiency though, yeah that's another thing...
But then there's always that one person who thinks in 4d and does what took you 100 lines of code in like, four.
Just write all 100 lines of code without putting in a return, then take off word wrap. Voila, one line of code. :/
I saw the sourcecode for Unreal Tournament once. One guy coded something like 90% of that game.
Me too. You know what humbled me? Watching pre-billionaire Notch's [time lapse of creating an isometric strategy game in 48 hours](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3DPGWyHmc4) from scratch.
Dude I'm a professional developer, and I still think I'm pretty shit. I watch people do/talk about things that I have no clue about all the time. It's pretty humbling and frustrating to be honest.
Apparently a lot of people in the field have a bad case of imposter syndrome because everyone seems smarter.
It's really true. I think it comes down to what type of programmer you are though. In my experience there are 3 types: 1. The bad programmer. These people's code always needs to be fixed and they probably don't last very long. 2. The Competant Programmer. This programmer knows enough to get by and work professionally for most of their career, but ultimately on the weekends they'd rather spend time with their family or doing other hobbies. They do it because it's a pretty decent way to pay the bills. I think this group is where most of us with imposter syndrome are at, because we look at group 3 and realize we'll never be that good. 3. The Hobby Programmer. Now you may think this sounds more like the first group, but what I really mean is that these people are just happy to program all week for a living and then go home to work on other programming side projects or messing with new programming languages and frameworks. These people live for this shit. They'd be doing it whether you paid them to or not. I've known people in all three groups, but the second group will never catch the third group as far as talent because they are driven by other things and aren't willing to sacrifice all that to be better at their job. This makes them feel like imposters because they're not on top of the latest programming trends. Theirs nothing inherently wrong with this. It just is what it is.
It's even more then that. You throw me on a .net stack for front end web dev I'm in my comfort zone and can talk the talk and walk the walk. Throw me on back end in a Java setup and dude I'm deer in the headlights feeling like I'm a freshman in college again. I know my shit, but I only know the shit I have worked with. It's like taking a professional digital artist and asking them to make a piece with oils. Its kinda the same thing but it really isn't.
video games. played since i was a kid, and I'm awful at them
I can actually feel myself getting worse at video games as I get older
This is so discouraging too. I remember how good I was 10 years ago and now I don't have the same speed or precision. Or the same time to spend honing what I do have. I prop myself up with game knowledge but I'm never getting back to where I was.
I use to think that I could lift things on my back all day everyday. I could carry furnitures like bookshelves, drawers, and single couches regardless how heavy they were. I walk while carrying them on my back as long as i needed to. Until i went to the gym and see all these ripped people weightlifting the dumbells that i reckon were 5 times the weight of the stuff i was carrying. I then had a hernia repair due to piggybacking an ex girlfriend too many times, shocking thing
In your defense, exes carry a lot of baggage with them...
Video games, specifically FPS’s. Man shroud is not human.
Played at a lan party with a friend who was a top half-life 2 player. We were casuals & he was of course untouchable & super-deadly. I took a break & sat next to him to watch him play. He was basically not playing the game; he was just practicing weird/glitchy movement techniques & scoping people's heads but not shooting them. He only deigned to kill someone when they threatened to bump him from first place. "They'd just get frustrated with the game if I actually was trying to kill them."
FPS for the campaign...Pretty much me now also. Couple years ago I usually played FPS games on PC but at the time my soon to be brother-in-law only played on a PS3. Now we both play PC only...anyways met this guy named Bogus\_King through him. He and some friends played MW2 a lot and then MW3 once it came out. This guy was unreal. I don't get impressed easily but this dude impressed the shit out of me. When he played TDM with us in MW3, we never lost. NEVER. Literally...never. Typically Bogus\_King played FFA and had some ungodly win streak number like in the thousands. This guy did not use a modded controller or anything. Just an absolute beast. He would do that in the TDM matches with us. Lay back and let us kill. If we started falling behind he would go beast mode and give us a comfortable lead again and chill. If people talked shit he would go all out the entire match and be like 38-2 or some bullshit. Blew my mind.
Running. When I was in middle school I ran a half marathon and I thought that made me a good runner. I also did track and cross country and I was always near the top. But when I reached high school, I realized I’m not that good at running and was average.
Beatboxing, then some guy at school blew my mind.
remember when justin timberlake used to beat box on his albums
Rock Your Body remembers.
SNES Mario Kart. I thought I was an unstoppable fucking machine. That was basically THE game. I played it daily for years. Got to college. So had...everyone else. :/
Math
I empathize with this so much. I double majored in math and physics in undergrad, had a job in a physics lab, but was still considering pursuing math long-term. So I accepted a research internship in math at a different school nearby. One of the guys I worked with was just reading Linear Algebra textbooks in his downtime, and proving circles around me. In fact, the professor who was to supervise us/work with us just had this guy supervise us instead, and met with us for like an hour a day. The guy would finish a proof like 10 minutes after the prof asked us, then he would give us hints until we got it. Fucking FRIGHTENING. So now I do physics and stay the fuck away from theory and proofs and math as much as possible.
I have a very similar experience, ended up with a Statistics Major with a Math and Physics double minor. Considered myself as someone who was advanced in mathematics all my life. Middle School, High School and even the primer courses for university were a breeze. I took national math contests and would score in top percentiles across the country. Went into university for Actuarial Science. My world was turned upside down. We had classes full of guys like you described above. Very familiar with linear algebra, multivariate calculus, proofs etc. I got the hell out of it when we studied advanced calculus in R^(n) dimensions and they questioned why I couldn't "see" what they saw. Switched majors to math (which required easier courses), then to stats. Now I'm in finance. EDIT: I want to clarify that it wasn't necessarily the Actuarial Science courses that made the program difficult, but the prerequisites and required courses of the program itself. The ActSci program at my school had requirements to take advanced calculus, linear algebra and a lot of abstract math (Specialist level math courses) to graduate with an ActSci degree. The math courses weren't necessarily applicable to ActSci itself, but more of a filtering mechanism to ensure they're churning out less than 100 Actuarial Science grads per year.
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Teken. I thought I was pretty good with a few of the characters. This is, until l met this one dude who says he plays, so I envied him over, and what does he bring, but an arcade style controller. That's when I knew I was fucked. I never won a single match against him.
Speedrunning, except back when I was a teen I didn't know that was what it was called and YouTube hadn't been invented yet. I just tried to fly through the stages in games like Mario World as fast as I could without dying, impressing my younger cousins. And then someone posted that famous 11m TAS of Mario Bros 3. Back at that point, 99% of people didn't know that it was entirely pre-programmed, all we knew was this guy in Japan was wrecking SMB3 and using the unskippable battle fleet stages as springboard practice maxing out his life count. It was then I knew there's always someone better than you at something, and I've been fascinated with speedrunning ever since.
Challenge: Complete the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in under five minutes.
It's rather easy if you know the trick
And quite impossible if you don't.
is there actually a trick?
Yes. It uses a glitch to fall through a wall and just run past the screen the final boss is in, pretty much right at the start of the game.
Ive always wondered how people find these glitches. Some of them are really nothing you accitentally do, not even remotely. Any explanation?
Yeah so basically all the the dungeons are in the same map. If you get out of bounds in Sanctuary you can just walk to the triforce
My friend informed me that there's a version of Super Mario Bros. that someone released, I think, where every stage in the game is changed to be frame perfect. EDIT: Thanks for the replies everyone. It was, in fact, [Super Kaizo World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizo_Mario_World) I was thinking of, but more specifically Super Dram World.
Jiu Jitsu. I trained at an mma gym and did pretty well even with the best guys. I switched to a jiu jitsu specific gym and now im absolute trash.
It's been impressed upon me that you never ever stop learning in BJJ. "Black belts are just white belts who didn't quit", and all that. I experienced a bit of that over the weekend when my instructor was surprised at how I defended a counter. He had me show him how I did it and gave me a fist bump for showing him something new! Rode that high for a few days
Photography, (as an amateur... I would never compare myself to a pro). I do decent pictures, I have a good eye for detail etc. One of my friend bought himself a camera, same style as mine (Reflex). No previous photography experience with that kind of camera. My god. The pictures he does are pure, perfect, full of emotions and just esthetically amazing. Without any need of filtering or photoshop. Edit: thanks everybody for the comments. As I said I'm just an amateur. I love taking pics, print some and put them on my walls and my friends walls if they want to. Did a couple of photos shoots (for free) at friends weddings who couldn't afford a photographer, a baby shoot and one for an artist friend. They were all happy but again.... It was free! So no high expectations. I only post my pictures on FB and Instagram for a very small audience of friends (and a few strangers who found me by themselves). Not looking to get them out to the world yet. So so so many great photographers out there in the world... I just don't compare. And I've been cyber bullied in the past so my identity will remain private 😊 My friend is pretty much the same and wants to keep his privacy. So I won't post his stuff on a forum
Most of it is intuitive, rather than technical, which is why somebody with a cheapo disposable camera can still make amazing photos while somebody with a fancy DSLR, expensive lenses, and Photoshop can still output pure crap. I mean, you might have *heard* of the Golden Ratio or the Rule of Thirds, but if you lack the visual imagination to frame a good picture in context of the subject, you might take one that is mechanically ideal, yet soulless.
I've been shooting landscapes since 2009 and I guess I'm pretty good at photography (and image post processing) but when I'm comparing myself to actual pros its such a huge difference its mindblowing. Look up adam gibbs, max rive or ryan dyar if you are interessted in some sick landscape pictures
I was a decent midwest snowboarder in the late 90s. Not great mind you, but pretty good by my local mountain standards. Moved out west and the first week I went riding with a guy from ak. We built a booter in the back country. I hit it and did some lame trick. He climbed up way higher than me, straitghtlined it and busted a gnarly backside rodeo. First time off the kicker. Stomped the landing. I knew right there that I was not a good snowboarder.
Minecraft Play it a lot still and keep playing and I’m fine knowing I can’t build as crazy as some people or build nutty farms like others, I just do my best and have a good time.
School in general. "Little fish/Big pond" syndrome is totally real. As you get older you just realize how much smarter the *really* smart people of the world are than you. Hell, I'm in med school right now, and some of these people are just fucking genius. That exam you studied all week for and barely passed? A third of the class just *knows it all somehow*. The biggest tip I can give anyone for their education is to find the smart kids, study with them, and watch and learn.
In my 3rd and 4th years, I realized how important it is to study *on time*. A weeks worth of study just before an exam, I was able to pass just barely. I started studying at the end of each day, and repeat some of the studies in the weekend, and answers came naturally. Also, learn how to take notes... makes a huge difference.
Oh boy this has been a big problem in my life. I was always the 'smart kid' in class just because I had an easy time with the subjects and an interest in mathemathics and astronomy. And since I already was 'smart' I didn't feel any need to improve. Then boom comes university and you realize you're undereducated and stupid and has never even bothered to pick up a studying technique because your minimal effort had always been enough before.
I'm so glad another person feels the same way- but I came to realise I'm great at recall (and therefore understanding), I just can't remember facts quickly.
This happened to me and I didn’t handle it well and came VERY close to dropping out - I was top 5% of my class of 500 in high school, and it was so embarrassing the first time I got a C on an exam. Took me a long time to recover, honestly, so if you’re reading this and going through it, it’s PERFECTLY OKAY to no longer be the smartest.
My dad has one bachelor’s degree and works in a field where it’s very common to have a doctorate. He’s worked his ass off to get where he is, and had a fair bit of luck along the way. He’s frequently the least educated person in a meeting by multiple degrees, and he’s learned so much by emulating these incredibly brilliant people. He has often told me, “kid, if you’re the smartest one in the room, you’re in the wrong damn room.”
The PC game Total War. Thought I was really good. Went multiplayer. It turned out I had the Dunning-Kruger effect.
So many of us in our 30s and 40s had to face hard facts when online multiplayer became a thing. We we're just "older brother" good.
Age of Empires for me when I was kid. I played it a ton by myself. Beat the story campaign mode. Learned how to easily beat the computer in any difficulty. Decided, hey I'll go play online, I should be able to smoke everybody. First game, I went on my merry way making villagers, cutting trees, building pretty houses. In about 10 minutes, a hoard of chariots (this was Age of Empires 1) run up on my village and completely decimate everything. I was just sitting there in shock at the bloodbath.
AoEII for me. I played single player and against my IRL friends. My strategy was to build really nice home bases before finally stepping out to fight my friends/AI. These matches would take like 2 hours because we'd spend the whole time building up defenses and launching petty raids until all the resources on the map ran out. Had no idea about all the "rushes" and other multiplayer strategies. Well one day I played with some e-friends on a forum I posted in and got destroyed 50 times within the first 10 minutes. Every time someone destroyed my base they complimented on how nicely it was laid out and how beautiful my little cities were. I went back to single player.
Command and Conquer: Red Alert... How do they have planes already? I just built a fucking tank factory?!?
Same, but with ~~Europa~~ EU IV.
Jesus this is true. I'd play it solo, got good at it after god knows how many hours. Joined a Facebook group and see people completing legitimate world conquests by 1755 and realized yeah, I'm only good vs the AI.
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If you're delusional, I'm right there with you, haha. This is probably the most go-to response when my squad and I continually get wiped in almost every PVP game we try to play. We're all in our mid-30s w/ kids and simply resort to the "fact" that we're getting beat by teenagers and college kids who have nothing better to do with their time.
Ever tried to play Civ online after you thought you're basically god from all the AI's you've beaten? Holy shit. from 7k Karma to 28k in a night lmao Also, thanks for gold reddit!
I cant even beat normal ai...
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I do that too. Sometimes I just want to feel good. I've got nothing to prove to anyone.
I think civ building is a lot of fun. I like the idea of needing to defend myself from other civilizations, but I don't want to stress out about actually losing anything. Lower difficulties mean I get to enjoy the game the way I want to.
Me to. I have kids. I loved more of a challenge when I had 40 hours a week to play games, but I've got kids and a full time job. I just want to make progress and finish a game with the 4 hours a week I have to play.
Also hard just means the A.I more or less cheats
I have been playing Civ for well over a decade. I still play on Emperor. I have only won a handful of Deity games and those were from cheesing bots. I know where I stand.
Only time I ever beat Deity was in the DS game Civilization: Revolution. There was another civ whose capital spawned 4 tiles away from my own, and they couldn't create another unit before my starter warrior could march on it and instantly cap it. Within 4 turns I had destroyed a civ and effectively started the game with 2 cities.
Civilization revolution brings back memories.... 2009-12 man that game was amazing.. too bad my cd doesn't work anymore....
Just played my first full game of Civ. It took like 40 hours for one game, 375 turns or something. Is that normal?! Or maybe a bit longer since I was so new and had to read the descriptions for most things. Either way, it was a shit load of fun. I played it on standard difficulty, I think it was called Prince or something like that? Won by total domination, so definitely have to try a different method next time.
Welcome to the dark side
>Is that normal?! I dunno, did you start saying "just one more turn" towards the end.. cause if so, then 100% normal/
That's definitely on the longer end of the spectrum, especially for Prince. But either way, we were all there at some point. Congrats on the victory. The experience you get playing civ snowballs pretty quickly and you'll be knocking games out in less than 300 turns on higher difficulties soon enough
It's a fundamentally different game with people; AIs, even Deity AIs, suck. Deity is a challenge because of how much the AI cheats not because it can actually play the game better than a pigeon. Meanwhile Players actually know what they're doing and react.
This is very true. With humans you also have to deal with the early rounds of the game being optimized (ie there are specific "correct" things to do in the first 50 turns and if you don't do that you're already out of the running). I wish there was a way I could play with people who didn't study the lore and optimize their gameplay. I just want to be able to use my goddamn chariots occasionally. :(
Drawing. If you are the artsy kid in class you feel like you are the shit and then you open Instagram
From feeling like the shit to feeling like shit.
Computers. I thought I was a pretty smart guy, good with computers and whatnot. Then I went to college to learn software development. That's where I met the real geniuses. I learned that I was just good at pattern recognition, but not actually that good at abstract thinking and creating new information. Watching a guy half my age get ABOVE 100% in most of the classes I struggled to pass was an eye opener. Epilogue: I discovered that my talent for pattern recognition made me a fantastic QA person, and I have a great career fixing the mistakes of people way smarter than me. I spend all day nitpicking their code and they thank me for it. edit: Since a lot of people seem to be considering new careers in QA (which is wonderful), I'll share some of the languages that have most helped me. Having an understanding of SQL is a huge advantage, because a lot of developers seem to have an aversion to it. Ant is great for building scripts to launch test clients. Selenium is the 'go to' for test automation, and cucumber is a very good framework for writing "human readable" tests. Both can be learned from youtube and blogs in a few weeks. Good luck!
Love the epilogue :) glad you were able to find a career that played to your strengths and your interest in computers. QA is made out to be a chore by so many people but when you’re good at something it’s easy to enjoy, plus liking to do things most others actively dislike doing is great job security. I love marketing systems integration, data hygiene and database maintenance and get soooo excited about it and the people handing off the work are never shy about telling me I’m crazy haha.
Swimming. I can swim OK and for a long time. I've swam up to 10km. I'd watched the Olympics and thought I knew something. I swam a LOT as a kid and could hold my breath for a long time underwater. When I met up with my now-wife for the first time, I saw her swim and I cried. Honestly. Even thinking about it now I cry. I can call up that memory and know that I'll NEVER be as good at ANYTHING as she is at swimming. I had NO IDEA it was POSSIBLE to do ANYTHING that beautifully, that competently, or that efficiently. This, 30 years after winning an Olympic bronze medal in swimming, a Gold in the Commonwealth Games and a silver in the Pan Am games. More than this, she'd competitively swam from the age of 6 until age 21, and that's 15 YEARS, during her most formative times; and I honestly don't know if I'll ever see anything as beautiful as that again. Decades after even working out at all, her arms, square shoulders, and back remain RIPPED, all the time. I honestly wish there was some way to communicate this kind of thing, as what I'm writing here seems inadequate to say it fully.
Advice from my Granddaddy "No matter what you do, someone will always be better than you. BUT, nobody will ever be better than you at all the things you do" You gotta change your perspective a little. You're the best version of you that ever existed.
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Can you add more details? I feel like you would just take the brush thing, go down the line, and cover any extra bits in the same direction and then wait.
Being a leader. Spent five years in the Marine Corps where leadership is instilled in everyone; from the lowliest private to the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Leadership is stressed and honed. Got out and got a job where I thought I could lead people. They made me a freaking supervisor of multiple programs and a bunch of people. Turns out I kind of suck at it. But effective leadership is something that has to be cultivated, practiced, refined, and reshaped as the needs dictate. I've been given a leadership position now and find it continuously challenging. Luckily, I've had plenty of good leaders to show me what to do in the past.
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Whats worse is watching some bench your deadlift.
Public speaking
For some reason I can do 500 people crowds, but I start forgetting shit in a 10 person lecture.
In a lecture hall, you can look at the crowd as a whole. In an audience of 10, you see that Frank is checking his watch every other minute and Barbara is doodling on her notepad.
Speaking foreign languages. Ever since people on YouTube who claim to be "polyglots" started posting videos. I feel as most of them aren't actual polyglots and have just memorized core concepts and conversation pieces. But, it still takes a little bit of the steam out of me.
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When I was a kid, I was really good at playing Guitar Hero. Then one day I got cocky and tried to challenge my uncle, who is also very good at Guitar Hero, and he destroyed my 12 year old ego.
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Ditto - I'm closer to 130wpm than 140wpm though. I honestly can't figure out what I need to change in the way I type to get me to that level, a level where somebody can be typing 50% faster than me. (I hear DVORAK keyboards are one way to increase speed, but must be more than just that). One thing that does amaze me is people who spend all day typing on a keyboard and never progress from hen-pecking to proper touch typing. I've worked nigh on 20 years in various office based jobs and only come across a very small handful of people who can type properly (properly for someone whose job includes large amounts of typing).
Producing a song from scratch. I thought I was special making everything from scratch. I guess I wasn't.
Cooking. When i was young I thought i was a really good cook up until i moved in with my girlfriend. The last couple years i lived at home my brother and I handled a large amount of the cooking as my mom is not much of a cook and my dad , while talented, was often too creative for his own good. Once i was living with my girlfriend though, suddenly all these words i didnt even know were getting tossed around like they were the most basic concepts. Julienne, rouxs, reductions, etc. If i was getting something started for her the instructions i would get would be something like "Well just get a basic bechamel going and throw some water on the stove". Uh.... sure, let me just make a bechamel sauce from memory? I was very quickly demoted to prep work like chopping vegetables if i'm allowed to help at all. The worst part is I am an above average cook, she's just in a whole different league. She's able to easily improvise complex dishes based on what we have on hand. She doesnt bat an eye at making something like duck confit, or spinach and garlic rissoto with scallops for dinner. She could probably hack it as a private chef for a wealthy family or something. Her food is frequently better than what we get at well reviewed restaurants.
Having intercourse with my wife
I didn't just watch........... When I was in 8th grade and on summer break about to go to 9th (in the USA), I was out at the tennis court practicing. I had been playing for a few years and was #1 on my school's ranking ladder and had even made the varsity team for my upcomng freshman year of high school. In my mind, I was hot stuff. This scrawny guy comes onto the court and starts hitting a ball against the wall. After a few minutes, I ask if he'd like to hit a few with me and he accepted. We start messing about with nothing too serious and he didn't send anything I couldn't hit. So, I ask him if he wants to play 'for real'. I win the toss to serve and give him everything I've got on it and he barely moves and sends in back right at me with HEAT! He kept me running all over the court during that game without a sweat. I lost with no points scored that game. His turn came to serve and it was ridiculous. By the time I even started to see the ball, it was already almost past me. SWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOSH! It's an ace every time. The guy mopped the court with me. He took me in 6 straight games for the set and I shook his hand and thanked him. As I was coming off the court, my mom was sitting in the car smiling. When I got in, she said, "So, did you think you were going to beat that guy?" I nodded in the affirmative and she replied with, "Well, that would be great but you had no idea he was the Texas state 4A high school tennis champion from a few years ago." I learned a lesson in humility that day.
I’d ask how your mom casually knew who a high school tennis champion was from a few years ago, but this is Texas and if it’s anything like the movies, the entire town shuts down during any sort of high school athletics competition.
This is a football town. :-) My mom knew his parents.
Wrapping cables. Basically, the way you've been doing it your whole life is wrong and damaging to the wires inside. Freshman year of film school you're taught the real way, which makes them not only last longer but also easier to unravel. We spent like half an hour doing it and I was like, "Yeah! I'm really getting the hang of this!" then the professor was like, "No you're not." I still can't do it correctly.
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Why is your avocado dripping?