4 ms·
I want to add self-awareness to the list. When I was reasonably new, but had a project or two behind me, I thought I knew everything that was worth knowing. Sl
by letharion 13y ago
I want to add self-awareness to the list.
When I was reasonably new, but had a project or two behind me, I thought I knew everything that was worth knowing. Slowly, as projects, responsibility and, most importantly, failures, all grew in size, it dawned on me that there was _a lot_ one could know about development.
Today, I know vastly more than I did a few years ago, yet now I feel like I know very little, because I understand how much else there is still to learn.
Now that I've done some technical interviewing for my employer, I see the same thing in others. Some of the best people are those that are humble enough to say that they don't know everything.
And on the flip side I've interviewed someone who rated themself 9/10 with git. I asked for an explanation of the term rebase, and got "huh?" as a response. I also see it in some vendors I cooperate with, young business' with young developers who think they can solve everything simply because they lack experience with failure.
So in short, knowing something of ones own limitations is important.
Relevant comic: http://old.onefte.com/2010/06/19/i-am-legend/ http://old.onefte.com/2010/06/19/i-am-legend/
- orware 13y agoThis is also true with me...everything I've learned over the past few years has only gone to show me all that I don't know. And I'm the type of guy that would be totally honest about my shortcomings but unfortunately it also seems like this thruthfulness is seen negatively by most employers (but just because I don't know right now doesn't mean I'm incapable of learning or don't have other skills that are similar and applicable to the new skill).
- StavrosK 13y agoOn the technical side, I will add "experience with systems as a whole, and knowing what's likely to fail in the future and how to design extensible and maintainable systems". I see junior developers who make things that work, but then are not easily extensible, cleanly abstracted, etc. Senior developers know what to plan ahead of time, what to leave until later, what questions to ask, etc. It doesn't have much to do with the language itself as with the design of the system as a whole.
- pault 13y agoI like the analogy of the false summit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_peak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_peak). The hill that you're currently climbing is obscuring the mountain ahead. :)
- WiseWeasel 13y agoMaybe he was just so badass with git that he never fucked up master and had to rebase.