3 ms·

I don't think we are in disagreement on "should be able to." The argument is that it's not an efficient use of time.

• JohnFen 7y ago
  Yes, that was why my assertion was qualified. The part I disagree with is "I think devs who think they can do everything are lying to themselves." I agree that devs can't do everything efficiently.
  • bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    I think there might be some devs who can do everything, but given that nobody has ever been tested on everything how do they know - at best you know that you have never yet been unable to meet a challenge and considering some challenges you have had you can estimate how long it should take to complete similar ones.
    • JohnFen 7y ago
      Well, if we limit our discussions to Von Neumann machines anyway, the number of different kinds of problems are not actually unmanageably large. Once you've touched on each of them a few times, I think you can be confident that you can figure out pretty much any situation. The only question is work efficiency. Different languages don't really matter, because once you've learned the major types of approaches languages take then everything else is (mostly) just a difference in syntax. If we look at mathematical and algorithmic issues, all of those can be learned if needed. They don't affect the ability of a dev to do them, only how long it would take. When I say a dev can do everything, I don't mean that everything is easy or fast for them. Just possible.