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You missed the third type: those who don't know if they can do better, but are still early enough in their career to want to do everything themselves because it

You missed the third type: those who don't know if they can do better, but are still early enough in their career to want to do everything themselves because it's exciting and they don't yet know what is worth doing yourself, and what you should trust history to have already done for you.

closeparen 6y ago
Also those who don’t know that “wheel” is a major category with many open source options, and dismiss them after a cursory look when you point this out.
ratww 6y ago
Yep. Those will become the great programmers of the future. Honestly, I can’t think of a better way of spending ones early career than reinventing some kind of wheel. We should stop pretending that one is able to become a good programmer just by spending time in a chair doing the same thing for years. Is it a mistake to reinvent the wheel? 99% of the time, yes. Are those mistakes an amazing learning tool? Definitely. If you’re a developer just starting: go and write a web framework, game engine or operating system. That's probably the only way to become a software engineer, since nobody will teach you the lessons you'll learn by doing. You’ll future self will thank you.
- ensiferum 6y ago
  Yep. It unfortunately takes a lot of writing code to understand that you should not write any code and to become good at not writing code.
  - TheRealPomax 6y ago
    There's nothing unfortunate about that. You're not going to be very good software developer unless you spent a number of years biting off way more than you can chew in the assumption you could succeed, and failing a lot along the way, discovering when the solution to "why is this not working" is "I should find someone else's code to do this for me". Computer science is a science. Software development is a craft. And like any craft, there's no substitute for experience.
    - ratww 6y ago
      > There's nothing unfortunate about that. So true. It’s one of the best things about our career.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      ”Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.” -Attributed to Nasrudin, but made popular by Rita Mae Brown and Will Rogers

closeparen 6y ago

Also those who don’t know that “wheel” is a major category with many open source options, and dismiss them after a cursory look when you point this out.

ratww 6y ago

Yep. Those will become the great programmers of the future. Honestly, I can’t think of a better way of spending ones early career than reinventing some kind of wheel. We should stop pretending that one is able to become a good programmer just by spending time in a chair doing the same thing for years. Is it a mistake to reinvent the wheel? 99% of the time, yes. Are those mistakes an amazing learning tool? Definitely. If you’re a developer just starting: go and write a web framework, game engine or operating system. That's probably the only way to become a software engineer, since nobody will teach you the lessons you'll learn by doing. You’ll future self will thank you.

ensiferum 6y ago
Yep. It unfortunately takes a lot of writing code to understand that you should not write any code and to become good at not writing code.
- TheRealPomax 6y ago
  There's nothing unfortunate about that. You're not going to be very good software developer unless you spent a number of years biting off way more than you can chew in the assumption you could succeed, and failing a lot along the way, discovering when the solution to "why is this not working" is "I should find someone else's code to do this for me". Computer science is a science. Software development is a craft. And like any craft, there's no substitute for experience.
  - ratww 6y ago
    > There's nothing unfortunate about that. So true. It’s one of the best things about our career.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    ”Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.” -Attributed to Nasrudin, but made popular by Rita Mae Brown and Will Rogers