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Comment by jmspring | Hacker News Reader

I've been regularly coding in C for 30+ years. The language has evolved, the behavior on what you can do "to be dangerous" depends on the architecture, as opposed to the things you can do "to be dumb".

Do I consider myself an expert, no. A pro? No.

Libraries, processors, application being built always expose challenges and things to be aware of.

This is why I take exception with the phrasing of "Pro" based off of a reading list.

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Back in my day, "Pro" meant Professional, as in one who earns their living doing this.

A language caters to an ecosystem. Most ecosystems change and unless you are continually learning, the definition of "pro" becomes ambiguous.

Despite who my employer is, I know much more about the internals and libraries associated with BSD and Linux related programming in the language of "C" than I do Win. Where do I declare myself an expert? "stdlib"? "stdio"? And so forth.

I'm continually a student in the areas that pop up that interest me (and the ones I wish to maintain).

Pro doesn't stand for Professor or anything. If you have 30 years of experience with something, then generally speaking, you're a pro.

There's little upside in thinking of yourself as a pro. The upside is in aspiring to be a pro: attention to detail, questioning your choices, actively seeking the edge of your field, putting in the time to practice, and so on. Those who aspire to be a pro are more likely to have these qualities, whereas pros tend to assume they do.

On the contrary; it's a very GOOD idea to think of yourself as a pro.

A good professional takes pride in his work, and aspires to improve his craft.

False modesty gets you nowhere.

To clarify, I'm not referring to the image that society forces you to project. It's obviously a bad idea to claim incompetence.

That said, are you sure it's a good idea to remove modesty from your mind? It seems like more have fallen to pride than were lost to modesty.

Not in my experience.

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