It's true that people often use the 10k-rule to downplay nature, but I disagree slightly with the article's thesis.
When I first discovered what programming was, I was obsessed from that moment on. It was all I wanted to do. Did I have a brain that was naturally talented in the kind of abstract reasoning that makes it easy to program? Probably. Did that make it more natural for me to become an expert? Maybe. But to me, what's more important is that I had a disposition that all but guaranteed that I was going to sink 10,000 hours into the practice of programming in record time.
So yes, my nature made it easier, but perhaps not in the way that most people think.
When I first discovered what programming was, I was obsessed from that moment on. It was all I wanted to do. Did I have a brain that was naturally talented in the kind of abstract reasoning that makes it easy to program? Probably. Did that make it more natural for me to become an expert? Maybe. But to me, what's more important is that I had a disposition that all but guaranteed that I was going to sink 10,000 hours into the practice of programming in record time.
So yes, my nature made it easier, but perhaps not in the way that most people think.