What is an outstanding programmer? There are two answers depending upon whom you ask. There are people who can build ambitious things at higher performance and

What is an outstanding programmer? There are two answers depending upon whom you ask. There are people who can build ambitious things at higher performance and durability while expending dramatically low comparative effort. Then there are people with influence. It’s typically the later group that gets 80% of the attention because it’s challenging to discern expertise without being an expert yourself. So, forget all that if you want to become a much better programmer. How to become an expert (many comments here already mention this)? - know your compile target - know your current projects goal - write code - provide iterative improvements Where most people fail is impatience, as in skipping directly to the end state, probably by skinning some prior existing solution. This is bad because you’ve learned nothing and released a solution where everything that doesn’t scale.