Proof you can do hard things
I hate the framing of problems or domains as hard, since it kept me from pursuing them further for many years. And the years later when I tried my hand at those problems, I found that it wasn&#x27;t nearly as hard as it was being made out to be.<p>Historically many problems have also been hard until people figure them out, and then they stop being considered hard problems. In recent years this has been mostly true of AI-related topics.<p>A lot of people have achieved mastery over really hard problems and synthesized their learnings over countless hours, making the information much more easily accessible for future generations.<p>If you keep hearing someone talk about how some field is hard you should take that as an opportunity to challenge yourself rather than shy away from it. One field that has recently interested me is organic chemistry, which I&#x27;m interested in learning mostly because of how many people I&#x27;ve heard talking about how it&#x27;s so challenging. May I find a worthy opponent.<p>Edit: This is relevant to HN when talking about C and C++. People talk about these languages as if they&#x27;re some magical beasts, but in reality you can get really far with them by treating it as a serious endeavor. People will talk about how they don&#x27;t have full mastery over the language, but you don&#x27;t need anything close to that in order to be effective. If you know how to program in other languages you can pick up C++ just as easily and start being effective very quickly. No mastery required. It&#x27;s not that hard.