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Ask HN: What habits make a great engineer/programmer standout from average ones?
What does the workflow of great engineers or programmers look like? What habit do they maintain to achieve that greatness?
If you have ever worked with such great people what characteristics did you notice that made them standout?
- gregjor 4y agoI think you can group working programmers (as opposed to hobbyists and dilettantes) into three broad categories: - Newbies, still learning, don't know what they don't know. - "Expert beginners," employable but lack curiosity, stuck at a mediocre skill level. - Programmers you might call great, excellent, 10X. They have significant experience and domain expertise, constantly learn and expand their skills. I don't have any numbers. Anecdotally in my (40+ years) experience most programmers fall into the "expert beginner" category. A few never seem to get out of the newbie phase -- five years in and can't write FizzBuzz or debug a simple program. I got the "expert beginner" name from Eric Dietrich here: https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-the-expert-beginner/ https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-th...
- raydiatian 4y ago> stuck at a mediocre skill level Is it fair to call this “most enterprise software” engineers?
- gregjor 4y agoProbably not, I've worked in big enterprise shops with some great people. But in places with lots of programmers you work with more of the expert beginner variety.
- giantg2 4y agoI actually agree. Most at my company, including me, are stuck at mediocre levels. However, I will add that it's not all due to a lack of curiosity. In my case it's because the company isn't focused on efficiency or creating experts (they value redundancy and rotation). The people might be good, but they'll never be true experts if they're switching stacks every 2 years, and half that time is spent in meetings.
- notemaker 4y agoThey update, look for, and provide documentation. They realize the value of good documentation. They review their own PRs, with a focus on making them easy to review. They are vocal on public channels and aren't afraid to ask questions outside their team - making sure that communication that could be relevant for other people isn't sent over DMs.
- aristofun 4y agoUnfortunately there were no obvious common patterns or rituals among those few really talented 100x programmers I've met so far in 20 years. The only feature they shared was a sharp mind. Deep thinking for some, both fast and deep enough for others. None of them cared about their "skill level" nor "greatness", most of them didn't even have any social media presence. They just enjoyed their job and challenges it brought.
- GoldenMonkey 4y agoActually tested their code. Anyone who does this is a standout.