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I have found that uber-productivity is domain specific. I might be uber-productive in a particular domain (Java programming), however put me in an environment t

I have found that uber-productivity is domain specific. I might be uber-productive in a particular domain (Java programming), however put me in an environment that does Groovy programming and I will stink as much as the next newbie. However good programmers develop techniques for meta-uber-productivity. They know what it takes to get uber-productive in another domain in a short time and what works for them. My way to try and me more productive in any environment is to get my hands dirty, start soon and make changes often. Practice makes perfect. As an individual you can be uber productive, just practice more of what you want to be productive at. Want to be productive at running a business, start your own and practice it. Want to be uber productive at programming, write code lots of it, and so on and so forth.

ahlatimer 17y ago
I've found that most of the competent developers I've met haven't had a whole lot more difficulty switching languages than the significantly better developers. There's a lot of synergy between modern programming languages. For instance, I started with Java, then moved to Python, learned COBOL and a little bit of php and ASP around the same time, then finally switched to Ruby, where I do most of my programming now. A lot of the things I learned in Java were still relevant in Python, and the same was true with the switch from Python to Ruby. COBOL was a bit of an outlier since I wasn't using the OO version of COBOL, but I already had a grasp on logic and flow of control, so even that wasn't that much of a stretch. I'm definitely not one of those elite programmers, even though I do seem to grasp concepts better than a lot of my classmates, so I find categorizing domain as a programming language in relation to programmer ability is flawed. Once you've achieved competency in a few languages, you should be able to switch languages without too much trouble, assuming those languages at least have a moderately similar paradigm (a notable exception might be, say, Java -> Lisp). It's the ability to understand concepts that tend to separate the good from the mediocre, and that might have been what you meant when you referenced "domain."

ahlatimer 17y ago

I've found that most of the competent developers I've met haven't had a whole lot more difficulty switching languages than the significantly better developers. There's a lot of synergy between modern programming languages. For instance, I started with Java, then moved to Python, learned COBOL and a little bit of php and ASP around the same time, then finally switched to Ruby, where I do most of my programming now. A lot of the things I learned in Java were still relevant in Python, and the same was true with the switch from Python to Ruby. COBOL was a bit of an outlier since I wasn't using the OO version of COBOL, but I already had a grasp on logic and flow of control, so even that wasn't that much of a stretch. I'm definitely not one of those elite programmers, even though I do seem to grasp concepts better than a lot of my classmates, so I find categorizing domain as a programming language in relation to programmer ability is flawed. Once you've achieved competency in a few languages, you should be able to switch languages without too much trouble, assuming those languages at least have a moderately similar paradigm (a notable exception might be, say, Java -> Lisp). It's the ability to understand concepts that tend to separate the good from the mediocre, and that might have been what you meant when you referenced "domain."