8 ms·

Ask HN: Do you consider yourself to be a good programmer?

27 points by type0 8y ago

if not, why? how do you validate your achievements?

cirgue 8y ago
No, at least not compared to some of the people that I work with. I really like the creative parts of programming, but I actually have a really hard time getting into a headspace where I can pick up a problem and just go. I can produce a high-quality product quickly enough that my employer is happy with my performance, but I don’t feel like I have the kind of raw talent that makes someone really good. I miss doing things where I spend most of my day working with humans. I don’t feel like I’m making the most of my time by doing dev work.
westurner 8y ago
> For identifying strengths and weaknesses: "Programmer Competency Matrix": > - http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/ http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/ > - https://competency-checklist.appspot.com/ https://competency-checklist.appspot.com/ > - https://github.com/hltbra/programmer-competency-checklist https://github.com/hltbra/programmer-competency-checklist
- digianarchist 8y ago
  Don’t read too much into that. TDD for example is not leveling up it’s an opinionated approach to development.
  - westurner 8y ago
    Automated testing is not a choice in many industries. If you're not familiar with TDD, you haven't yet achieved that level of mastery. There's a productivity boost to being able to change quickly without breaking things. Is all unit/functional/integration testing and continuous integrating TDD? Is it still TDD if you write the tests after you write the function (and before you commit/merge)? I think this competency matrix is a helpful resource. And I think that learning TDD is an important thing for a good programmer.
    - gaastonsr 8y ago
      There is absolutely no need to follow TDD to be good at testing.
      - westurner 8y ago
        This is all unfounded conjecture: it seems easier to remember which parameter combinations may exist and need to be tested when writing the function; so "let's all write tests later" becomes a black box exercise which is indeed a helpful perspective for review, but isn't the most effective use of resources.
        mpetkevicius 8y ago
        IMHO being convinced that there's only one true and correct methodology (TDD, Scrum, etc.) or paradigm (functional, objective, reactive programming, etc.) is a sign of being a bad programmer.
        westurner 8y ago
        A good programmer finds common attributes and behaviors and organizes them into namespaced structs/arrays/objects with functions/methods and tests. Abstractly, which terms should we use to describe hierarchical clusters of things with information and behaviors if not those from a known software development or project management methodology? And a good programmer asks why people might have spent so much time formalizing project development methodologies. "What sorts of product (team) failures are we dealing with here?" is an expensive question to answer as a team. By applying tenets of Named agile software development methodologies, teams and managers can feel like they're discussing past and current experiences/successes/failures with comparable implementations of approaches that were or are appropriate for different contexts. To argue the other side, just cherry picking from different methodologies is creating a new methodology, which requires time to justify basically what we already have terms for on the wall over here. "We just pop tasks off the queue however" is really convenient for devs but can be kept cohesive by defining sensible queues: [kanban] board columns can indicate task/issue/card states and primacy, [sprint] milestone planning meetings can yield complexity 'points' estimates for completable tasks and their subtasks. With team velocity (points/time), a manager can try to appropriately schedule optimal paths of tasks (that meet the SMART criteria (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and Time-bound)); instead of fretting with the team over adjusting dates on a Gantt chart (task dependency graph) deadline, the team can What about your testing approach makes it 'NOT TDD'? How long should the pre-release static analysis and dynamic analyses take in my fancy DevOps CI TDD with optional CD? Can we release or deploy right now? Why or why not? 'We can't release today because we spent too much time arguing about quotes like "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." ("Self Reliance" 1841. Emerson) and we didn't spec out the roof trusses ahead of time because we're continually developing a new meeting format, so we didn't get to that, or testing the new thing, yet.' A good programmer can answer the three questions in a regular meeting at any time, really: > 1. What have you completed since the last meeting? > 2. What do you plan to complete by the next meeting? > 3. What is getting in your way? And: Can we justify refactoring right now for greater efficiency or additional functionality?
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    Whether you like it or not it would be remiss to ignore it or not understand it.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
amerine 8y ago
Nah, but I get by.
inertiatic 8y ago
Comparing yourself to people on the internet is pointless so I'll skip that. I've been working for about 5 years and out of the technical people I've worked with I'd say I'm a better programmer than exactly one. At times it's because of laziness (didn't read up on X), at other times due to temperament (I refuse to hold on to easily googl-able information), but frequently it's because of limited working memory or lesser ability for abstract thought. I'm aware of impostor syndrome but I'm not sure this is a case of it. This isn't stopping me from contributing on every team I'm a part of, getting consistently good feedback, getting interviews however. I feel in general, as you can get most things done given enough or even close to too much time, then you are generally valuable.
AlexAmee 8y ago
No but I don't have to be good because 90% of all software is stupid CRUD.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  I don't do a lot of CRUD but it always struck me a lot of this work should be configuration rather than coding.
zaarn 8y ago
I consider myself capable enough to solve most problems in an average way.
chrisbennet 8y ago
I care deeply about my craft. My code is as simple to understand as I can possibly make it. I spend almost zero time debugging. (OK, last week I had a WTF??? bug. The black screen turned out to be the lens cap still on.) I feel no need to validate my achievements. (This is a little bit trollish, forgive me.) You could use a matrix of pots, pans and knife work as a proxy for a chefs competency I suppose. Or, you know, you could taste the food he creates.
wilsonnb2 8y ago
I'm pretty confident that I am an average programmer. The operating systems class I took in college went almost entirely over my head. I'm pretty sure I got a C- or a D as my final grade and that was only because I ended up in a group that had a few people better than I was. I got C's in a lot of the higher level classes that I took. The root cause of this, I think, is that I just don't like programming that much. I'm a smart person and I think I could be an above average programmer if I applied myself but I just don't care enough to do so. There are other things that I enjoy more that I want to spend my time and effort on. I thought that this would be a problem when I graduated but it turns out that the world needs average programmers. My current project at work is a Windows Forms app written in C# to pull data out of a database and plug it into a Word template to generate a Word document. It's not glamorous and it's not trendy but it needs to be done by someone. Pay me a decent salary, give me good insurance, and I'll gladly clock 40 hours a week writing CRUD apps because it beats manual labor, retail, or going back to school.
carlmr 8y ago
Compared to coworkers in my last two companies I'd say I'm definitely well above average, but not the best. This might sound like boasting, but it boils down to being good at delivering on time, caring about the craft and being motivated to improve things. I think if you care about what you do, then you're probably already in the upper 50%, because most people don't, and it shows. Now if you pair giving a fuck with some programming talent and interest in improving your skills and productivity you can easily get into the top 10%. To get into the top 1% you need to be very focused on programming. I have too many other hobbies to be that focused only on this aspect of my life. But I'm ok with that. If you start comparing yourself to internet people, there are just too many that you can compete with them on everything. There are too many experts in too many niches that you could read all the HN articles and compare favorably in comparison.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Never mind caring, in my experience a lot of people in this industry struggle to even write working code. You might not see them much in startups but do some work for enterprises and you soon discover there are a lot of them. They usually make up for their lack of technical skills with an abundance of political activity.
  - carlmr 8y ago
    I know exactly what you mean.
throwawaymath 8y ago
What is a "good programmer"? What would you like to accomplish by soliciting the feedback? Without agreeing to a common definition and measurement, it's not a well-founded question. I don't think of myself as a "good programmer" because "good" is too blunt a qualitative measure to be productive. It's a disagreeable and poorly specified measurement. I haven't seriously thought about whether or not I'm a good programmer, just as I haven't thought about whether or not I'm a good person. In fact I consciously disengage from assessment like that. I validate my achievements on a case by case basis, and I validate them according to how close I came to maximal efficiency and minimal time in accomplishing a task. It would be deceptively attractive to use those two heuristics as a rhetorical scaffolding for the meaning of "good", except that I don't compare achievements; they're mostly orthogonal. The question of whether or not I'm "good" has no meaning for me, because I only evaluate performance within the confines of discrete tasks and sets of related tasks. Further I personally don't have enough insight into the difficulty of all possible tasks, so I refuse to generalize my performance on any particular subset of them to how well I'd do on a majority of them. And to the extent that there are only so many tasks and skills are transferrable: any given task may have differing dimensions of deadline, efficiency or implementation requirements. To get a useful measurement, you'd have to draw arbitrary lines in the sand across each of these dimensions and convince everyone else in discussion that these lines are the sensible ones. This probably isn't a satisfying answer. But it's not intended to be. The idea of a "good programmer" is conceptually attractive but practically meaningless.
- wilsonnb2 8y ago
  The question has nothing to do with whether anyone is actually a good programmer or not - the OP asked "do you consider yourself to be a good programmer?". It's a question about how you view yourself, not about objectively comparing your programming skills to someone else's, therefore it doesn't require a common definition or measurement.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    Yes, exactly. And such a question would still have utility - despite being a subjective assessment - if the measures of the assessment were common. But that's not the case here. Not only are respondents subjectively assessing themselves, they're subjectively assessing themselves according to arbitrarily different measurement criteria which they need not disclose. Therefore, the only thing anyone can conclude from responses is, "For some definition of 'good programmer' which is specific to each individual respondent, approximately x% of respondents believe they satisfy the definition." It's one thing to solicit opinions; it's another thing entirely to open the floor for opinions which may not even be the same. The OP may have received personal assessments and anecdotes about steak, apples and cauliflower when their intention was to solicit personal assessments about almonds.
krapp 8y ago
No, because I don't finish my projects and I haven't written anything I consider good.
orcs 8y ago
I consider myself able to be a good programmer but I have no experience. I'm a mature student studying a computer science degree at distinction level however my overall lack of experience is obvious to me. I know how to program the way I've been taught but I don't have the experience to say whether what I'm doing is any good. I also have no idea where to find out whether what I'm doing is right or wrong.
vinylkey 8y ago
I would consider myself a very average programmer. I have some good experience and a good knowledge set, but I'm not super passionate about programming to drive myself to be a "great" programmer. edit: I think the biggest thing holding me to being average at best is practical experience in larger systems. In school, I was always good at the theory parts of computer science, but did so-so in projects. In my professional experience, I think that still holds true: I can manage language intricacies, and write pretty clean code for smaller problems, but I can get into trouble with architecture-level stuff like defining models. I also have a tendency to over-engineer solutions to complex problems.
segmondy 8y ago
I'm a shitty programmer. I've written code for gameboy, playstation, servers in C, assembly, mobile apps, tons of backends, a CPU simulator, assembler & disassembler. I'm in a leadership role now, but still hacking go, javascript/typescript, python, & prolog for the love of it. But am I a good programmer? Not even close. Ever heard of Jeff Dean, Linus? Carmack? Norvig? Then when I look at the multitudes of opensource projects in Github, I can only stay humble. I'm average at best if that.
superasn 8y ago
I consider myself a lazy programmer who is also very hardworking. As in instead of solving the problem at hand I'd rather spend a week working on my own framework so that I could save 5 minutes should I have to deal with the same thing again in future although the chance of it happening is 1 in 100.

27 points by type0 8y ago

if not, why? how do you validate your achievements?

No, at least not compared to some of the people that I work with. I really like the creative parts of programming, but I actually have a really hard time getting into a headspace where I can pick up a problem and just go. I can produce a high-quality product quickly enough that my employer is happy with my performance, but I don’t feel like I have the kind of raw talent that makes someone really good. I miss doing things where I spend most of my day working with humans. I don’t feel like I’m making the most of my time by doing dev work.

westurner 8y ago

> For identifying strengths and weaknesses: "Programmer Competency Matrix": > - http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/ http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/ > - https://competency-checklist.appspot.com/ https://competency-checklist.appspot.com/ > - https://github.com/hltbra/programmer-competency-checklist https://github.com/hltbra/programmer-competency-checklist

digianarchist 8y ago
Don’t read too much into that. TDD for example is not leveling up it’s an opinionated approach to development.
- westurner 8y ago
  Automated testing is not a choice in many industries. If you're not familiar with TDD, you haven't yet achieved that level of mastery. There's a productivity boost to being able to change quickly without breaking things. Is all unit/functional/integration testing and continuous integrating TDD? Is it still TDD if you write the tests after you write the function (and before you commit/merge)? I think this competency matrix is a helpful resource. And I think that learning TDD is an important thing for a good programmer.
  - gaastonsr 8y ago
    There is absolutely no need to follow TDD to be good at testing.
    - westurner 8y ago
      This is all unfounded conjecture: it seems easier to remember which parameter combinations may exist and need to be tested when writing the function; so "let's all write tests later" becomes a black box exercise which is indeed a helpful perspective for review, but isn't the most effective use of resources.
      - mpetkevicius 8y ago
        IMHO being convinced that there's only one true and correct methodology (TDD, Scrum, etc.) or paradigm (functional, objective, reactive programming, etc.) is a sign of being a bad programmer.
        westurner 8y ago
        A good programmer finds common attributes and behaviors and organizes them into namespaced structs/arrays/objects with functions/methods and tests. Abstractly, which terms should we use to describe hierarchical clusters of things with information and behaviors if not those from a known software development or project management methodology? And a good programmer asks why people might have spent so much time formalizing project development methodologies. "What sorts of product (team) failures are we dealing with here?" is an expensive question to answer as a team. By applying tenets of Named agile software development methodologies, teams and managers can feel like they're discussing past and current experiences/successes/failures with comparable implementations of approaches that were or are appropriate for different contexts. To argue the other side, just cherry picking from different methodologies is creating a new methodology, which requires time to justify basically what we already have terms for on the wall over here. "We just pop tasks off the queue however" is really convenient for devs but can be kept cohesive by defining sensible queues: [kanban] board columns can indicate task/issue/card states and primacy, [sprint] milestone planning meetings can yield complexity 'points' estimates for completable tasks and their subtasks. With team velocity (points/time), a manager can try to appropriately schedule optimal paths of tasks (that meet the SMART criteria (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and Time-bound)); instead of fretting with the team over adjusting dates on a Gantt chart (task dependency graph) deadline, the team can What about your testing approach makes it 'NOT TDD'? How long should the pre-release static analysis and dynamic analyses take in my fancy DevOps CI TDD with optional CD? Can we release or deploy right now? Why or why not? 'We can't release today because we spent too much time arguing about quotes like "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." ("Self Reliance" 1841. Emerson) and we didn't spec out the roof trusses ahead of time because we're continually developing a new meeting format, so we didn't get to that, or testing the new thing, yet.' A good programmer can answer the three questions in a regular meeting at any time, really: > 1. What have you completed since the last meeting? > 2. What do you plan to complete by the next meeting? > 3. What is getting in your way? And: Can we justify refactoring right now for greater efficiency or additional functionality?
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Whether you like it or not it would be remiss to ignore it or not understand it.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

amerine 8y ago

Nah, but I get by.

inertiatic 8y ago

Comparing yourself to people on the internet is pointless so I'll skip that. I've been working for about 5 years and out of the technical people I've worked with I'd say I'm a better programmer than exactly one. At times it's because of laziness (didn't read up on X), at other times due to temperament (I refuse to hold on to easily googl-able information), but frequently it's because of limited working memory or lesser ability for abstract thought. I'm aware of impostor syndrome but I'm not sure this is a case of it. This isn't stopping me from contributing on every team I'm a part of, getting consistently good feedback, getting interviews however. I feel in general, as you can get most things done given enough or even close to too much time, then you are generally valuable.

AlexAmee 8y ago

No but I don't have to be good because 90% of all software is stupid CRUD.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
I don't do a lot of CRUD but it always struck me a lot of this work should be configuration rather than coding.

zaarn 8y ago

I consider myself capable enough to solve most problems in an average way.

chrisbennet 8y ago

I care deeply about my craft. My code is as simple to understand as I can possibly make it. I spend almost zero time debugging. (OK, last week I had a WTF??? bug. The black screen turned out to be the lens cap still on.) I feel no need to validate my achievements. (This is a little bit trollish, forgive me.) You could use a matrix of pots, pans and knife work as a proxy for a chefs competency I suppose. Or, you know, you could taste the food he creates.

wilsonnb2 8y ago

I'm pretty confident that I am an average programmer. The operating systems class I took in college went almost entirely over my head. I'm pretty sure I got a C- or a D as my final grade and that was only because I ended up in a group that had a few people better than I was. I got C's in a lot of the higher level classes that I took. The root cause of this, I think, is that I just don't like programming that much. I'm a smart person and I think I could be an above average programmer if I applied myself but I just don't care enough to do so. There are other things that I enjoy more that I want to spend my time and effort on. I thought that this would be a problem when I graduated but it turns out that the world needs average programmers. My current project at work is a Windows Forms app written in C# to pull data out of a database and plug it into a Word template to generate a Word document. It's not glamorous and it's not trendy but it needs to be done by someone. Pay me a decent salary, give me good insurance, and I'll gladly clock 40 hours a week writing CRUD apps because it beats manual labor, retail, or going back to school.

carlmr 8y ago

Compared to coworkers in my last two companies I'd say I'm definitely well above average, but not the best. This might sound like boasting, but it boils down to being good at delivering on time, caring about the craft and being motivated to improve things. I think if you care about what you do, then you're probably already in the upper 50%, because most people don't, and it shows. Now if you pair giving a fuck with some programming talent and interest in improving your skills and productivity you can easily get into the top 10%. To get into the top 1% you need to be very focused on programming. I have too many other hobbies to be that focused only on this aspect of my life. But I'm ok with that. If you start comparing yourself to internet people, there are just too many that you can compete with them on everything. There are too many experts in too many niches that you could read all the HN articles and compare favorably in comparison.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Never mind caring, in my experience a lot of people in this industry struggle to even write working code. You might not see them much in startups but do some work for enterprises and you soon discover there are a lot of them. They usually make up for their lack of technical skills with an abundance of political activity.
- carlmr 8y ago
  I know exactly what you mean.

throwawaymath 8y ago

What is a "good programmer"? What would you like to accomplish by soliciting the feedback? Without agreeing to a common definition and measurement, it's not a well-founded question. I don't think of myself as a "good programmer" because "good" is too blunt a qualitative measure to be productive. It's a disagreeable and poorly specified measurement. I haven't seriously thought about whether or not I'm a good programmer, just as I haven't thought about whether or not I'm a good person. In fact I consciously disengage from assessment like that. I validate my achievements on a case by case basis, and I validate them according to how close I came to maximal efficiency and minimal time in accomplishing a task. It would be deceptively attractive to use those two heuristics as a rhetorical scaffolding for the meaning of "good", except that I don't compare achievements; they're mostly orthogonal. The question of whether or not I'm "good" has no meaning for me, because I only evaluate performance within the confines of discrete tasks and sets of related tasks. Further I personally don't have enough insight into the difficulty of all possible tasks, so I refuse to generalize my performance on any particular subset of them to how well I'd do on a majority of them. And to the extent that there are only so many tasks and skills are transferrable: any given task may have differing dimensions of deadline, efficiency or implementation requirements. To get a useful measurement, you'd have to draw arbitrary lines in the sand across each of these dimensions and convince everyone else in discussion that these lines are the sensible ones. This probably isn't a satisfying answer. But it's not intended to be. The idea of a "good programmer" is conceptually attractive but practically meaningless.

wilsonnb2 8y ago
The question has nothing to do with whether anyone is actually a good programmer or not - the OP asked "do you consider yourself to be a good programmer?". It's a question about how you view yourself, not about objectively comparing your programming skills to someone else's, therefore it doesn't require a common definition or measurement.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Yes, exactly. And such a question would still have utility - despite being a subjective assessment - if the measures of the assessment were common. But that's not the case here. Not only are respondents subjectively assessing themselves, they're subjectively assessing themselves according to arbitrarily different measurement criteria which they need not disclose. Therefore, the only thing anyone can conclude from responses is, "For some definition of 'good programmer' which is specific to each individual respondent, approximately x% of respondents believe they satisfy the definition." It's one thing to solicit opinions; it's another thing entirely to open the floor for opinions which may not even be the same. The OP may have received personal assessments and anecdotes about steak, apples and cauliflower when their intention was to solicit personal assessments about almonds.

krapp 8y ago

No, because I don't finish my projects and I haven't written anything I consider good.

orcs 8y ago

I consider myself able to be a good programmer but I have no experience. I'm a mature student studying a computer science degree at distinction level however my overall lack of experience is obvious to me. I know how to program the way I've been taught but I don't have the experience to say whether what I'm doing is any good. I also have no idea where to find out whether what I'm doing is right or wrong.

vinylkey 8y ago

I would consider myself a very average programmer. I have some good experience and a good knowledge set, but I'm not super passionate about programming to drive myself to be a "great" programmer. edit: I think the biggest thing holding me to being average at best is practical experience in larger systems. In school, I was always good at the theory parts of computer science, but did so-so in projects. In my professional experience, I think that still holds true: I can manage language intricacies, and write pretty clean code for smaller problems, but I can get into trouble with architecture-level stuff like defining models. I also have a tendency to over-engineer solutions to complex problems.

segmondy 8y ago

I'm a shitty programmer. I've written code for gameboy, playstation, servers in C, assembly, mobile apps, tons of backends, a CPU simulator, assembler & disassembler. I'm in a leadership role now, but still hacking go, javascript/typescript, python, & prolog for the love of it. But am I a good programmer? Not even close. Ever heard of Jeff Dean, Linus? Carmack? Norvig? Then when I look at the multitudes of opensource projects in Github, I can only stay humble. I'm average at best if that.

superasn 8y ago

I consider myself a lazy programmer who is also very hardworking. As in instead of solving the problem at hand I'd rather spend a week working on my own framework so that I could save 5 minutes should I have to deal with the same thing again in future although the chance of it happening is 1 in 100.