If you are given a choice, then isn't it easier to pick what you are most familiar with from a productivity standpoint? If your first choice is rejected, then the question comes as to what the next choice has to offer. There is no point in being obstinate about using a Mac or not using it. A lot of FOSS enthusiasts and contributors use a Mac and a great many of them don't. If, as a matter of principle, you are against a Mac or a PC and would instead insist on IBM/HP/Dell PC running Linux, assess your principles again (Remember: I don't always die for my principles, what if they are wrong?). If they still make sense to you and the company refuses to provide you with that kind of hardware, reject the offer. Can you? Ultimately what value you produce with what you have trumps what you have. No?
I think there is a question of progression through your career as well. For talented programmers, (I believe) it is less likely to feel 'stuck' at some point. Over the years, they can handle increasingly more complex challenges with same relative ease. Others have to do significantly more efforts to handle abstractions well enough to ensure 'cruising' along.
We have previously discussed something similar [here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6709631). The book, Free to Learn, by Peter Gray discusses the promise of democratic schools with a historical and social perspective. He even calls the Sudbury Valley schools "America's best kept secret".
I attended the open house of the closest (around 50 miles from where I live in CA!) local Sudbury Valley School (called Diablo Valley School, DVS) a few months ago. We, of course, went there with the kids. After coming back home, I asked the kids which school they would rather attend -- their present school or this one and they had no doubt in their mind that they wanted to attend the DVS.
But for some reason, I am not able to make the switch to the idea that the democratic schools are the way to go, although Dan Greenberg (the founder of SVS, back in 1968 in Framingham, MA) has been running this 'experiment' for past 46 years. Maybe, as a parent, I feel overly responsible for my kids and insist that I know more about them than they do. And we know, as Kahneman (Thinking fast and slow) and others have repeated shown, how little we know. It's a sad impasse.
Oh, this is a timely discussion. I just wrote an article on this topic: http://bit.ly/recurse-iterate. What I thought was good about go to statement was that it helps us understand how recursion works and how one can eliminate it in favor of iteration.
Incidentally, I am reading Cal Newport's "So Good ..." and the thoughts in this article resonate with some of those expressed in Cal's book. Half way through the book right now, and I can say that it is an unusual advice made to a society that harps the passion hypothesis. An interesting thing is on Amazon, the book that allegedly started/fueled the passion hypothesis (What Color is your Parachute?) gets 5 stars from 62% of the reviews, whereas "So Good ..." gets 5 stars from 56% of the reviews!
If you are born and brought up in a setup where passion hypothesis is predominant, the advice "passion is rare and is a side-effect of mastery/hard-work" and "skill trumps passion" comes as an eye-opener.
The essence of the article is about effectiveness of technology/trade in reducing the 'gaps' between the capabilities of workers/artisans results in lowering their average compensation. But I think there's something missing. Professor Katz famously suggested not to become scientists [1] because getting your research funded becomes top priority than the assurance that 'all you'll do is research'. In a way, since we live in a society, workers need to feel personally responsible for /constantly/ finding the appropriateness (value) of their skills and elevate them as necessary to make sure they have a steady income and their craft is still valued by 'customers'. If you stagnate there, then you will gradually (or rapidly) become replaceable. And as you age, being indispensable becomes harder. So, perhaps, it makes sense to learn things that ensure stability of demand for your skills.
I like the essence of this blog post. I have applied similar strategies and although I am not a 100% sure about them being the 'right thing' to do, I am fairly convinced that they are a 'way to go' about learning new things. One thing is clear though (like Malkiel says in his book 'Random Walk Down the Wall Street' -- you become rich slowly, you only become poor fast), you have to learn to be patient -- you are going to get better at things only gradually.
Sometimes however, you need a more direct feedback if you are 'making progress'. I have seen that maintaining a blog or two is very effective in getting that feedback in two different ways. Making video lectures of your own is also an attractive option, but requires more effort. If you just write down something you think you understand as succinctly as you can, it helps to solidify your understanding. And if your (understanding of the matter and hence) writing is any good (of course, you should actively promote it), the magic of Internet will make your writing visible to many. People will flock to your blog and will ask you all kinds of questions, sometimes they will point out your mistakes and then you learn more what you thought you had already learned.
Should I ignore this as a typo? How am I to rely then on this as a classified information?