How would you rate your programming skills?
Displaying poll results.19414 total votes.
How would you rate your programming skills?
Ernest asks Frank how long he has been working for the company. "Ever since they threatened to fire me."
Advanced is good enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Advanced is good enough (Score:4, Insightful)
I think your very comment demonstrates expert knowlede. There's different ways to be an expert, and experts disagree with each other all the time. But expert doesn't mean you know everything, it simply means you've attained a high enough level of skill at something that you can speak about it with high confidence. Meta thinking on what maintainability means, and what sharing code means is a good example of that.
I'm not sure you're being quite fair with JQuery though. JQuery is a library, not a language. I'd also like it to be more stable and have had problems using it as an API that's in flux, but I think it's a bit different compairing the stability of a language and the stability of a library. They're two different animals
Re:Advanced is good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
I would consider you an expert (Score:2)
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An "Expert" is not someone who knows everything. An "Expert" is someone who knows the most important things, including THE most important thing: how to get the answers to questions that they don't know.
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Exactly. I rated myself an expert because that is how people see me. I'd wager that most "Averages" would actually be considered "Experts" by my clients, not because they're in the upper echelon of all developers, but because even Average development skills puts you far in the upper echelon of society.
Now, if I were rating myself against my peers, I'd say Average or Advanced. But I don't think anyone would honestly rate themselves Expert against their peers in "programming". I've known "Java" experts an
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Re:Advanced is good enough (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's perfectly reasonable to have a "programming" expert. To me, that's someone who has such a broad base of experience with different languages and tools that they can shift between procedural, object oriented, scripted, functional, and other language paradigms with ease.
An "expert" programmer is someone to whom the syntax of a language is "just details" because they already have a grasp on how the language works and what it does based on minimal summary points of it's features.
That's not to say an "expert" programmer will produce perfect code in any language that gets thrown at them, but that they can be up and coding at speed in a matter of days or weeks, producing code as good as and at a volume equal to people who've already had a few years experience with the language or toolkit.
Really, an "expert" is someone who is an expert at learning new things, not someone who has experience with everything out there. They're the people who are so confident in their abilities that they'll jump in feet first on a project using a language they've never coded in with a framework they've never seen, and be confident that they'll still meet the deadlines.
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The way I see it, advanced programmers can efficiently and correctly implement robust and reusable Fourier transforms, Shor's algorithm or Bloom filters.
Fourier, Shor and Bloom, however, are the experts.
Re: Advanced is good enough (Score:2)
I don't consider implementing well established, well documented algorithms as requiring "advanced" programming. You're translating pseudo code to language do jour. That requires basic competency at the craft and nothing more.
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Fourier, Shor and Bloom, however, are the experts.
Have you seen the way they code???
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I also put Advanced rather than Expert, although I have been a Software Engineer for 25 years. I expect most of the "Experts" are people who have been doing it long enough to think they know everything but not long enough to realize that they don't know everything.
I agree, CS professors, Kernel developers and others who live and breathe coding 24/7/52 might qualify as experts. Myself, I like to do something other than coding when I'm not working although I sometimes also code for fun in my spare time. I've been coding for a living for well over 20 years and I consider myself good enough to criticise everybody else (tongue in cheek) except perhaps the above listed experts. If that doesn't work I'm now getting to be old enough that I can fall back on pointing out that
Simplistic Progression (Score:2)
Really the progression needs to be something like:
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced
Internally Recognized Expert
Novice
Adrift
Actual Expert
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I expect most of the "Experts" are people who have been doing it long enough to think they know everything but not long enough to realize that they don't know everything.
I'm surprised that people are putting such a high bar for being an 'expert'. Personally, I consider someone who can program in any language at an expert level to be, well, an expert programmer. I don't feel it means you must know virtually everything there is to know about programming in all languages.
In my teens, I came up with the defin
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I disagree about jQuery. It's not really in flux, because you're not required to use the latest version, in fact it's not even normal (from what I've seen) to do so. The standard practice is to explicitly load the version you developed against. Even when you load it from someplace like ajax.googleapis.com, they keep all the versions available there, so you just specify the version number.
Moreover, I believe it's considered best practice to *not* move to later versions unless you need newer features that
Re:Advanced is good enough (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it depends on how you define "expert". I don't think being a C++ compiler developer who knows every aspect of the language and can recite the BNF verbatim is the bar, although it probably is to say you're a C++ expert. The poll asks about the more general topic of "programming skills", by which I think expert should be language independent and a mastery of a certain number of programming topics. I don't even think the bar for expert is knowing every single programming topic well, I suspect no one can do that, it's a big field and over 30-40 years we may spend detailed time in a number of areas, but I doubt we'd hit them all.
Definition of "expert" (Score:4, Funny)
I think it depends on how you define "expert".
To define it requires that we break it down to its components.
Ex - Means former or has-been
Spurt - a drip under pressure.
Therefore, an expert is a has-been drip under pressure.
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Re:Advanced is good enough (Score:5, Informative)
I was *the* expert at my company for our original products -- standalone database applications developed in the days of MSDOS. Although I was second-generation (apart from a smaller application I wrote myself), the original developers had long since moved on and for 15 years I held court. I knew every source file and every bug by name; I could crank out modifications at a moment's notice; I was sole technical support for the final 5 years of the products' existence.
Suddenly management realized that we didn't have enough customers on the legacy products to need me doing a combination code maintenance / support any more, and there was a scramble to find a new spot for me.
My big mistake was not staying current in the technology. Suddenly it was 2010 and I still knew only the most rudimentary basics of HTML, CSS, VB, and SQL. The only thing that saved me was the goodwill I had built up over the previous 18 years; various managers were patient with me while I scrambled to learn JavaScript, ASP.NET, and jQuery.
After four years with those platforms (and buffing up my SQL skills) I'm back to the point that can at least consider myself "intermediate"... and the playing field is changing again. We're moving away from JavaScript/jQuery and into JavaScript/Angular on the front end and C# on the back. Not to mention a side helping of vCloud, Attunity for SQL Server, and TFS 2013. Once again I'm a complete novice, struggling to learn stuff that the newcomers already knew before they were hired.
Look upon me with horror and beware, kids: Don't wait for your job description to change before you start learning new technology. Dive into it NOW, so you'll be ready when your current skill set is obsolete.
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Being able to quickly get the shell of a project working in a new language is a good mark of at least a good programmer. You know how to solve the problem (hopefully with some best practices), you just need to get the syntax working.
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I don't have enough years behind me to compare to you, however i started a little late so just maybe it's possible to have a little wisdom...
It looks like you've moved from a stable slow paced background into a fast paced unstable area, even though it's true you should keep your skills sharp, web development is just a fast moving area and the latest hotest libraries come and go... even the ones that appear to be well adopted and around for a long time, for instance the best thing that came out of jQuery was
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I went 15+ years without learning SQL because Clipper was my bread and butter from 1986 to 2010. The first time I saw SQL, I wondered why on earth anyone thought it was any use... dBase and its derivatives seemed so much more robust. I still like the way Clipper et al operate on a single record at a time and manipulating the current-record pointer is so easy, but I've come to grudgingly accept that SQL's recordset results of a query are useful too. It's all part of my extremely belated growth from procedur
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I feel very grateful and lucky [for one thing at 64, I'm still working, probably have more than I can handle actually] that I joined an industry that provides me b
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Although I've been a pro for 3 decades, I wouldn't want to be called an expert. The latest fads...
Expert doesn't mean all-knowing, nor does it mean you encompass knowledge of every last detail in the field. What it does mean is that you have the training and experience to be relied upon for advice by your peers. That's it. An understanding of what you don't know is a prerequisite for being an expert. Otherwise you'll give bad advice instead of saying, "that's not my area of expertise, go ask someone else."
Are you someone your peers go to for advice, and is your advice considered reliable by them? C
intermediate == intermediate (Score:2)
i'd rate you as Expert.
i put myself as Intermediate but what's funny is, even by your criteria i'd probably still be intermediate
i'm at that point where it's all just semantic differences between languages i use...the text is like a forrest i have to hack through to get the machine to do what i want
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Finally I settled on "Good enough to criticize everybody else." You don't have to know anything to criticize.
So few experts... (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience nearly all of the people who self-rate as an expert are really intermediate or maybe advanced.
I think the main reason for the gap is most programmers don't get the opportunity to work closely with a real expert/master. They judge themselves based on the apparent skillset of their current and prior co-workers, and once you have a few years of experience it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that since everyone else around you is about equal to you or less experienced, you must be an expert.
tl;dr, if you think you're an expert you probably need more exposure to better programmers.
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tl;dr, if you think you're an expert you probably need more exposure to better programmers.
Or to move out of the narrow scope of your current programming work to other languages and/or application types to discover whether you're actually an expert in programming or just have particularly deep experience in one limited area.
explains lack of women (Score:2)
this is a hugely un-addressed issue in computing across the board
imho, this can also explain *alot* of why we have fewer female coders/programmers!!!
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I put intermediate because of this reason. I've been programming for close to 20 years but most of that in VB of some sort. Seems the couple of shops I worked in didnt' want C or C++ code and I just never found the time to do much in Linux. Hence I can probably get around in most languages (mostly due to experience) I'm no expert in any of them. Besides I still do a lot of look ups on the net to find out how to do things and get procedures. No point in coding it when someone else has already done so.
Embarrassed (Score:3)
I don't consider myself a programmer at all. The languages I know, I consider scripting languages, not programming languages, and I'm so uncomfortable with them that I try to avoid having to use them unless there's some problem I just can't solve without scripting something.
However I have held jobs with the title Software Engineer.
I feel like an embarrassment to real programmers everywhere.
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The distinction between a "scripting" language and a "real" language is quite arbitrary, and the lines are very blurry. The difference used to be that scripting languages were interpreted, while "real" languages were compiled. But these days, many languages are hybrids, or somewhere between. Some languages can be used either way.
C++, for example, is usually compiled, but not always. C# is "tokenized," only partially compiled. JavaScript is a scripting language, but bits of it are compiled while it runs
all a "script" (Score:2)
he distinction between a "scripting" language and a "real" language is quite arbitrary, and the lines are very blurry.
totallly
all code is instructions excuted by a machine in real time
the "scripting" disctinction is used to differentiate *within* that closed system...it's a type of command and over time users have found the distinction useful linguistically...
sort of like an animal trail that gets worn in...coders have to distinguish between functions of languages so that's how it evolved
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Here's a clue kids - screaming "it's not my code that's slow it's the network" is just asking for someone to demonstrate your code running locally to rub your nose in it and stop you from trying to shift blame.
So I'm firmly in the "Good enough to criticize everyone else" camp even if my own code is shit.
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I used to be a programmer... over a decade ago. And I used to love programming in college.
But I haven't directly touched code (for a living anyway) in a long time, other than recreational coding, and that's mostly been in Python/Perl/Ruby/PHP.
I remember enough to be dangerous with SQL and with the fundamentals, and thankfully, C/C++ haven't changed much.
But while I am former programmer, I still I grok CS quite well. Algorithmically, I could write a ray tracer or optimize the cycles in a complex routine base
Rusty (Score:2)
I've avoided programming (Score:5, Interesting)
I've avoided programming. It's not my cuppa. I like to troubleshoot PCs and make them run faster while consuming less electricity. I'll design and roll out databases and even write scripts for those DBs. I'll learn what needs to be learned to fix website errors and then promptly forget it.
I leave the programming to other people and don't want anyone to come to me with programming problems. I leave programming to the pros and prefer just to be seen as a "super user".
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I do web development and it's mostly the standard LAMP stack type stuff. One of the frustrations I have constantly is that I still need to learn how to do someone else's job simply to do my own.
In that regard I've learned how to use Linux with various services, learned about SOLR, Nginx, Apache, ESXi, Docker, MAAS, and a list of other things I've probably mostly forgotten. If I wanted to, I feel confident I could rebrand as a sysadmin, but lord knows I don't want to. I like writing code and solving challen
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We are twins in this regard.
You left mine out... (Score:2)
Define expert (Score:5, Interesting)
That is probably the core of the issue. What can be defined as an expert in programming skills?
Most common mistake: I know language XYZ by heart. Nice for you, but does someone able to recite the whole English dictionary an expert in language? Or does it means he ca write a Shakespeare? This merely say that you have extended knowledge of the language not the programming.
Another common mistake: I am working faster that others. Well working faster does not make you a better programmer. It may mean you cut corners, or didn't think about the various situations possible. Or simply that the other developers are perfectionists maniacs while you do what you're asked.
Another one: my software runs bug free for X years without issues. Well yea, so does my Hello World! Thinking you old code is still the best in the world is not an argument for being an expert,but that you stopped improving yourself. This is far from an expert which should ALWAYS be evolving.
So what could be defined as "Expert" in programming? Simply the knowledge of programming concepts themselves (i.e. low coupling, high cohesion, modularity, etc.) and applying them everyday, everytime. Those are language independent as you can use modules even in Bash. Another example : writing an include functionality for ASP 2.0 before it is even included in ASP 3.0 because scripting all in one page is good for monkeys. A real expert WILL use those concepts not because he is told to, but because he understands that everything written today may still be in use in 2 years and will require maintenance. Making sure his output is maintenance friendly now defines an expert in programming. If some new concept goes out, then it should be analyzed for it's long term impacts, NOT for the bells and whistles (https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/02/22/applebug.html looks pretty much someone who did too much python, isn't it?). Evolving and thinking about the future, not only the present, is what makes an expert. And that is a very rare skill.
it's just a label for the "highest skill" (Score:2)
What can be defined as an expert in programming skills?
we could have nitpicky, obtuse discussions about this question for infinity
we all know what the word "expert" means...and in this quiz it's the highest of many other options
if we ditch the semantics and just look at the math "expert" is just a label for the highest skill level
there's always a "highest" and this is the chosen word...it fits the common usages of the word, so it's a decent choice
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Hard to say (Score:2)
I've professionally programmed in the past and continue to explore and learn even though I'm not a programmer now (unix admin). I do a lot of scripting for my environment though and one of the other admins recently quipped after I said something like "I do a lot of scripting", that I actually "program scripts". In other words, I use my programming skills to create maintainable and robust scripts vs 10 lines to achieve a task. It tends to be interesting when we ask applicants if they can script and to descri
Which skill? (Score:2)
But if you ask me to do any version of C, I'll be asking other people what to do.
Frankly, the concept of 'computer skills' is pretty much the same as spoken languages - meaningless unless you specify which language.
Still a beginner. (Score:2)
I did some coding since BASIC, LOGO, Pascal, C, C++, ASM (too hard), HTML, ASP, Python, etc. However, they were more of hacking like copies and pastes. I am much better in breaking stuff as a QA tester. ;)
Chess Program (Score:2)
When I write a chess program that can beat myself at chess, then I'll up myself a notch above Novice.
So far, I have always beat my creations.
you think you're and expert... (Score:3)
until you meet someone who really is, and who isn't a primadonna.I've had the pleasure of meeting a few.
Language and UNIX (Score:3)
Likewise, you hear many people say "UNIX is UNIX. Once you know one, you know them all!" Again, that's true up to a point. Going from a Solaris machine to a HP/UX or AIX machine, the locations of programs, system administration tools and occasionally programming libraries will all be different. For example, TCP sockets work differently in HP/UX than most other commercial UNIXes and Linux. Are you an expert when you know one UNIX, or all of them?
A lot of programming also requires knowing the business process and code base at the place where you're programming. Most of us don't get to start with a blank slate. It usually takes about a year to come up to speed on a new company's business process and code. You might be able to hit the ground running and be pretty productive immediately, if you're already familiar with a lot of their environment, but to get to the point where you know approximately in what files and functions a reported problem could be occurring typically takes about a year.
At some point it might seem to your peers that you know everything, but in this field one realizes that the number of things you don't know will always be larger than the number of things you do know.
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It's not as easy as you think. It prints out "+5", which I'm pretty sure no one will get unless they have had this explained to them before.
Expert enough NOT to criticize everyone else (Score:2)
I'm a software architect, and after 30 years of experience and many (of those terrible evil) patents, I spend most of my time helping, suggesting, guiding, and giving options to other programmers. And I still learn things, every single day. Yes, even from the Indian kids.
Frogger (Score:2)
Does that old frog "game" that they used to teach programming basics to elementary school students count me as a novice? I think I still remember that game.
In my field (Score:2)
However, take me into one of the hundreds of OTHER fields of programming skill: database, gaming, AI, graphics or most of the others and I wouldn't even register a flicker. In short there's no such thing as "programming skill" once you get past beginner.
Those terms are ortogonal to each other. (Score:2)
I'm consulted by others for my knowledge on PLs, technologies and plattforms and paid for it. Hence: Expert. My programming however is probably sorta advanced right now, because I currently do mainly PHP and WordPress (shitty architecture by programming n00bs).
However, it depends on the field. Back in the eighties as teenagers we did assembler and opcode. I'd be back into that in 40 minutes, way faster than others today. That probably makes me an expert in that field, by todays standards. I'm also an expert
an "existential" problem (Score:2)
I was a COBOL programmer on Mainframes (Score:2)
I don't know whether to boast, or seek professional help...
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Probably both.
Unrated (Score:2)
(Obviously selected "Good enough to criticize everyone else"
With the exception of C ... (Score:2)
Multi-select Options (Score:2)
The last option doesn't seem to be exclusive to the others. ie any level of programmer can feel they're good enough to criticise.
Should have been a checkbox and not a radio button on that one.
Should be mutiple choice (Score:2)
Why can't I select both "Novice" and "Good enough to criticize everyone else"?
Inflation (Score:2)
Dice anyone? (Score:2)
This is the most transparent poll to date.
Two options, please (Score:2)
I would like to select both "Novice" and "Good enough to criticize everyone else."
Good enough to criticize everyone else (Score:2)
And here's the criticism:
Me Code Pretty Some Day [std.com]
A voice in the wilderness
Re:The average person thinks they've above average (Score:5, Informative)
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According to the poll. the average person thinks they are average.
The poll says nothing about average. "Intermediate" != "average". Although according to this poll so far, the average person thinks they're intermediate.
</pedantry>
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True. The median person thinks they're intermediate too.
Re:The average person thinks they've above average (Score:5, Funny)
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Caution is a healthy attribute of self-assessment. I too said "intermediate" of myself, though I know a dozen people at work who would protest that I'm under-estimating myself. But to be cautious in such things is to keep the door open wide for improvement, which is what we all naturally desire.
Say that about your colleagues. ;) I voted on "nonexistent" just because I don't do very much programming not even enough to be called a "novice"; but my workmates, who don't have a clue about programming, would say I'm "advanced" no less.
It turns out that people who don't know anything about a subject will trust anyone with a bit of knowledge as an "expert".
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That's because most people believe in mastery, and thus immediately believe they're advanced at everything they're pretty confident with. They think you can master something, that you can be at the ultimate progression, know all there is to know; thus they think that being an expert, being able to do things and get results, makes them near-mastery. They think a black belt in Karate makes them the Ultimate Warrior, and so imagine getting a few belts makes them some super-advanced fighting machine.
I believ
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How about another poll next week:
How would your peers rate your programming skills?
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I used to think I was a good programmer. Then I started to learn about how much I didn't know, new techniques and frameworks and languages, and then I saw that I had a lot to learn.
Ten years later, I've learned a lot - but I've also discovered even more that I don't know and that I can improve upon.
So, I consider myself "average". In my domain I'm pretty good, I can crank stuff out that works well, is easy to understand and set up, has tests and documentation, etc., but there's a really, really big world o
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I used to think I was a good programmer. Then I started to learn about how much I didn't know, new techniques and frameworks and languages, and then I saw that I had a lot to learn.
Ten years later, I've learned a lot - but I've also discovered even more that I don't know and that I can improve upon.
So, I consider myself "average". In my domain I'm pretty good, I can crank stuff out that works well, is easy to understand and set up, has tests and documentation, etc., but there's a really, really big world out there.
I think a better test of being in the advanced is how easily you can follow other peoples code, no matter how poorly written it is or different in style to your own.
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That too is a skill you develop. But you develop it separately from your own programming skill. I know some very good coders that can't read bad code because they spent their whole career in a rigid process environment with strictly applied coding standards and peer reviews. So they never got any experience reading poorly written code in any significant quantity. Then there are some poor programmers I know who are above average reading bad code because that's what they deal with day in and day out. It'
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According to the poll. the average person thinks they are average.
The vast majority of people on slashdot though are towards the younger end of the spectrum (ie, recent graduates and students). As people get older they tend to get caught up in family and such and drift away from the site, or like me only come back once or twice a month. This means the highest peaks should be towards the rookie end of the spectrum.
The only way to get past novice or intermediate at programming is to get at least 10 years experience under your belt, at least 5 of which should be paid profess
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The only way to get past novice or intermediate at programming is to get at least 10 years experience under your belt, at least 5 of which should be paid professional work on large complex systems or something equivalent in academia like a doctorate (anything else is just too easy).
Ah, this myth again. No, time does not equate to expertise. According to hundreds of scientific studies, time spent engaged in the exercise of a skill is the least correlated factor with expertise: people who play piano a lot, who program a lot, who have spent tens of thousands of hours drawing, are not automatically fantastically skilled, and in fact time spent exercising a skill is horribly unrelated to development of the skill.
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The only way to get past novice or intermediate at programming is to get at least 10 years experience under your belt, at least 5 of which should be paid professional work on large complex systems or something equivalent in academia like a doctorate (anything else is just too easy).
Ah, this myth again. No, time does not equate to expertise. According to hundreds of scientific studies, time spent engaged in the exercise of a skill is the least correlated factor with expertise: people who play piano a lot, who program a lot, who have spent tens of thousands of hours drawing, are not automatically fantastically skilled, and in fact time spent exercising a skill is horribly unrelated to development of the skill.
So how does it work then? some people are no doubt just brilliant at stuff due to pure natural ability even though they never practice? What utter bullcrap.
I am not saying that practice automatically makes people better programmers (you can practice for years in a lazy way and not get any better), but I do think that to be a better programmer a huge part of it is breadth of experience at solving different problems, facing different challenges and working around different constraints.
Being naturally gifted o
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I put myself as "Intermediate" because I'm not a professional programmer, I don't do a whole hell of a lot of programming by any stretch, yet I look at professional programmers and I see so much wrongness. 15 year veterans writing enormous bodies of code, no functions, 300 column SQL tables, no planning, bad architecture, it just keeps coming.
When I started writing games in Unity, I bashed my head on C# and complained about not knowing the absolute best way to use various overlapping language features, u
Re:The average person thinks they've above average (Score:5, Insightful)
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Have you tried turning it off and on again?
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I too wrote my first programs in the 1970s. But I still engineer software for a living, having chosen to not get into the management side of things (I know my people skills don't lend themselves to management). I'm "above average" only through decades of practice.
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I would expect the average person who reads this website *is* to at least one standard deviation if not more, above "the average person".
I suspect based on poll responses people are rating themselves against other people who know how to program. Most IT guys for example know how to program but don't consider themselves experts (because their job is not to program, but to keep the ship running, for example, which involves a bit of programming but a lot of other things).
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I've certainly been there where I didn't consider myself good enough to take on a project and then after encountering newbie mistakes in the project I've had to tutor the person that did take on the project.
The most ridiculous was a loser back in the day that had written an installer as an MS batch file but didn't know he was limited to 7.3 filenames. He'd spent two days trying to find a bug and was shocked I saw his obvious
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These days, I'm a programming god to my children for screensavers written in QuickBasic, fairly skilled in some specialized stuff, sort of an amateur in Python and JS, mostly baffled by PowerShell, and utterly ignorant of C, C++, C#, Visual C-minus, C for Dummies, Hi-C.....
short learning curve (Score:2)
i think you should count it...it's like golf...you use to be pro-level and you're not going to just forget that ability
however the tech passes you by...but the learning curve is very short...
y'all could crank out a smartphone app way better than 80% of the shit out there if you tried i bet
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I'm with you. I wrote a fortran program to calculate pi to 23 decimal places in 1965. It wasn't useful then, and is just laughable now. But I did manage to get it on about fifteen punch cards.
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Same boat here. I did my programming for CS, earned my bones there.
These days, it is mainly shell scripts, but I do consult the camel if something more sophisticated is needed. If I had to do web stuff, I'll just probably go with mod_perl, although it might be better to do a more "web-centered" language for a larger project.
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Kind of a dumb question on the face of it. If they're your peers, then you're all about equal. Call it a five-point-five with a very tiny variation, unless they're talking about peers with respect to something else.