3 ms·

While I do not entirely disagree, I think a /very/ important caveat is that a lot of these domains involve not a particular level of skill in itself, but a lot

by mercer 6y ago

While I do not entirely disagree, I think a /very/ important caveat is that a lot of these domains involve not a particular level of skill in itself, but a lot of domain knowledge that is entirely a matter of 'knowing'. No shortcuts. I've worked with really good senior engineers, but part of what made them good was that they /weren't/ getting involved with the nitty gritty of centering a div or making something work cross-browser. This was the domain of the front-end-only masochists. I sort of consider myself a full-stack developer, but I'm quite aware of the lack of 'stuff I should just know' in all the stuff involved with that (devops, front-end UI/UX, front-end 'making it looks right' CSS/HTML, back-end DB design, back-end application structure, etc.) My 'broad' knowledge is perfect for many of my clients, but I wouldn't sell (or guarantee quality) to anyone demanding proper expertise in most of these particular areas. I'll probably fuck up something setting up the Postgres db that only becomes apparent under high load. I might forget some crucial element about hardening the server(s). My JS knowledge is probably already out of date because the last time I did serious JS development it was Webpack with React (without hooks) and mostly no css-in-js. I'd probably still pick sass/scss for comfort. And webworkers are fascinating but I never got to it. Now I'm pretty smart, and as an autist I spend what my therapist would consider potentially an unhealthy amount of time reading up on ALL of this stuff. My work is my hobby. As I'm nearing my forties I'm definitely giving that some thought, but I digress. My point is that except for a few unusually gifted people, I find it truly hard to believe that it's possible to be a full-stack web developer who is actually /skilled/ at all parts of the stack. There's way too much domain-specific knowledge (that is constantly changing and evolving) for a normal human to be able to stay on top of, let alone be an expert in. (again, with some incredibly impressive exceptions).

Silhouette 6y ago
I think there's truth in the fundamental argument you're making, but I'm not so sure about the little details argument. When I was a junior programmer doing my first job, I knew exactly how to check the length of a list in the language I was using, and hundreds of other everyday little details like that, without needing to look anything up. But back then, I was only using one language, and I was mostly doing basic implementation work all day. Fast forward a few decades, and I can't always remember those little details any more. Sometimes I get them wrong or have to look them up. So am I a less competent programmer than my junior self? Of course not. It's easier to confuse details like that when you've seen subtly different versions of them in each of the dozen or more languages you've programmed in professionally. But is it really important to remember many variations of each of a thousand little programming tasks, when I can look them up in moments if I haven't used them for a while and then need them? Would that really be a better use of my mental abilities than understanding what makes a good abstraction or how to evolve a useful software architecture or how to develop a robust testing strategy or how to quickly recognise a missing edge case that could lead to a bug or how to design out that edge case in the first place or how to find or build tools to help? The reality is that Me 2020 Edition would outclass Me Junior Edition by a huge margin in any skill that matters: productivity, code quality, communicating effectively, anything. The extra depth of understanding and breadth of knowledge far outweighs the trivial effort of looking up a detail now and then if I'm starting to work on something with a language or library or tool I haven't used for a while. Those little details are superficial, and it's the more substantial changes that really dictate how effective I am. In fact, I'd argue that a pretty good benchmark of someone's level as a developer (and probably a lot of other things, too) is where their threshold for something being a superficial detail lies. What areas of understanding are so simple to that developer that they don't need to know or remember them, they can just pick them up quickly and reliably on demand whenever they need them? To a junior front-end developer, that might be things like learning the DOM elements for semantic markup. To a more experienced developer, it might be remembering how `this` works in JavaScript. To a more experienced developer still, it might be entire libraries and frameworks: it doesn't matter much whether your project using Angular or React or Vue or TheNextOne if they can just pick up whichever it is and be using it fluently within hours anyway even if they've never touched it before.

by mercer 6y ago

Silhouette 6y ago

I think there's truth in the fundamental argument you're making, but I'm not so sure about the little details argument. When I was a junior programmer doing my first job, I knew exactly how to check the length of a list in the language I was using, and hundreds of other everyday little details like that, without needing to look anything up. But back then, I was only using one language, and I was mostly doing basic implementation work all day. Fast forward a few decades, and I can't always remember those little details any more. Sometimes I get them wrong or have to look them up. So am I a less competent programmer than my junior self? Of course not. It's easier to confuse details like that when you've seen subtly different versions of them in each of the dozen or more languages you've programmed in professionally. But is it really important to remember many variations of each of a thousand little programming tasks, when I can look them up in moments if I haven't used them for a while and then need them? Would that really be a better use of my mental abilities than understanding what makes a good abstraction or how to evolve a useful software architecture or how to develop a robust testing strategy or how to quickly recognise a missing edge case that could lead to a bug or how to design out that edge case in the first place or how to find or build tools to help? The reality is that Me 2020 Edition would outclass Me Junior Edition by a huge margin in any skill that matters: productivity, code quality, communicating effectively, anything. The extra depth of understanding and breadth of knowledge far outweighs the trivial effort of looking up a detail now and then if I'm starting to work on something with a language or library or tool I haven't used for a while. Those little details are superficial, and it's the more substantial changes that really dictate how effective I am. In fact, I'd argue that a pretty good benchmark of someone's level as a developer (and probably a lot of other things, too) is where their threshold for something being a superficial detail lies. What areas of understanding are so simple to that developer that they don't need to know or remember them, they can just pick them up quickly and reliably on demand whenever they need them? To a junior front-end developer, that might be things like learning the DOM elements for semantic markup. To a more experienced developer, it might be remembering how `this` works in JavaScript. To a more experienced developer still, it might be entire libraries and frameworks: it doesn't matter much whether your project using Angular or React or Vue or TheNextOne if they can just pick up whichever it is and be using it fluently within hours anyway even if they've never touched it before.