Zed A. Shaw, Painter

Let's take programming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%E2%80%B2%E2%80%B2 … It's sort of the minimum concepts of computation. Or, even how the entire early Lisp was defined on 1/2 a page of a book. The concepts from both traditions are very simple.

Now painting: https://www.amazon.com/How-Color-Paint-Arthur-Stern/dp/1626540632 … That book pretty much lays out the basics of painting in the first few pages, but all visual art has like 4 concepts to understand: 1. Drawing as Value and Proportion. 2. Color as Hue and Intensity. 3. Focus as Edges. 4. Composition.

Photography is fairly similar to Painting, but they have better more exact terminology for the same things. You've got value range, focal point, composition, hue, exposure, etc. But after that and the few technical words and concepts it's not that many concepts.

How about music: 1. Rhythm -- Everything is 12/8. 2. Harmony -- There's only 3 chords. 3. Melody -- There's just 2 pentatonics. 4. Lyrics -- Only sometimes. And a lot of that is incredibly subjective and depends on the culture.

But, to be any good at these things you have to study for an incredibly long time, and many times start early in life. Most of what top professionals end up doing is just practicing a hole ton until they internalize these concepts and to the point they don't think about them.

The reason I think these concepts take a lot of practice is because they are something you cannot understand intellectually, but instead have to experience. You could read about painting or music your whole life and still never be able to do either. Same with programming.

There's also a performance aspect to all of these things. Doing them doesn't mean you can talk to a bunch of people about them. You do them for other people, and that's how you get paid or get recognized. That performance aspect requires practice for real time action.