Hacker News Reader

Comment by collyw | Hacker News Reader

Does "world-class software developer" even mean anything other than a big ego?

It could mean that they see themselves as competing in a global marketplace. That they don't rely on geography and are quite happy to be ranked against the best of them. Not necessarily ranked highly but content to compete based on productivity and quality of work alone.

Probably not what they meant though :)

The Leica selfie in the header says everything that needs to be said.

I can't be absolutely sure what you mean by this comment, but it feels like a needlessly personal attack.

FWIW, I don't really approve of the self-description of "world class software developer", either because (i) I'm not really sure what it means, but (ii) it sounds a bit pretentious. Still, it doesn't really relate to the quality or validity (or otherwise) of the post.

Its no more a personal attack that your comment, "it sounds a bit pretentious" since that's all my comment means.

Leica manufacture cameras made of brass and, like apple, are more "experience-oriented". I can appreciate putting a picture of yourself on your blog, but taking a photograph of yourself holding a camera which obscures everything but a brand name... that's equally suggestive of "a bit pretentious".

Given his github profile, I think we can give him credibility that he is pretty good.

https://github.com/ashfurrow

are you that saying based on his contributions or the actual projects he's created? Because former doesn't make any sense to me.

Did you ever notice that real world-class software developers don't even have to say that they are ? :)

Not really if you work as a contractor or freelancer. In those cases you have to shout to the world that you are world class developer. Recruiters or Managers love terms like world-class, ninja, rockstar etc. Its unfortunate state of our industry.

This is unfortunately true in life in general. Many people of decision making power are attracted to self promoters. So if you really want more opportunities and more upward growth, you'll get what you want faster by peacocking.

Any time I see ninja or jedi in a job ad I avoid it. Rockstar is borderline because Joel coined the term as far as I am aware and actually has some decent stuff to say about software.

Well, I just looked through some of his commits on some of the repos. Not pretty good. Productive maybe but definitely not good. Commit messages are quite lacking he's hard coding user display strings.

Without spending more time or having some domain knowledge of his problem, I can't really comment on the architecture setup/choices.

You’re showing your inexperience here nitpicking on commit messages (set by team / project conventions) and situational things like constants.

I’d work with Ash any day of the week.

I've worked with him five or six years ago and he was very productive and smart even then. People on HN need to relax and dial down the harshness of their criticism.

    s/good/busy/

I hope it's just ironic, so I give him the benefit of the doubt :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com