This article is less about specifically running 100 mile-races and more about doing something that requires self-control; and the claim is that doing so will make anyone a more successful person.
> ”Bill Gates spent thousands of hours learning to program”
Here's the full quote: "Bill Gates spent thousands of hours learning how to program computers—but he only had that opportunity because he had the good fortune of having parents who supported his education."
I think you're in violent agreement that 10,000 hours isn't sufficient.
> There is virtually zero use for this capability [running 100 mile races]
That's a major point of the article, given it's discussion of the spillover effect: "The bottom line: Practice self-control in one area of your life, and you can apply it in other parts, too."
> Seems like way too much work for an attacker to try to figure out.
I dunno, seems like way more work to come up with, maintain, and actually use the generator. Seems easier to just click a bunch in my vault to generate and copy, although I guess you're protected from vault-theft?
Given your example, I had already figured out all the way up to ies/otto are probably foreign numbers (more specifically, otto looks like 8 and 16 looks like double of 8) before even seeing that you just gave the answer away.
Of these, 1: Chose the project you want to contribute to (and 1.5: Choose the issue to work on) and 9: Follow up are the hard ones. Both are primarily social problems.
For 1, it's mostly about knowing yourself. What projects interest you, and where can you contribute?
For 9, it's convincing the owners that your contribution is a net positive. Start with 2: Check out how to contribute, and proactively reach out so your pull request doesn't come out of the blue.
Oh, and be willing to put your ego aside -- it can be tough to defend your work, particularly if you're a new (and thus haven't built up trust) contributor. It gets easier, both as the project learns to trust you and as you learn the work within their practices.