So you're a mediocre developer? Now what? | Hacker News Reader

So you're a mediocre developer? Now what?

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10 pointsthricegr86 comments

This is pretty much how I feel most of the time. I think the value of the average good-but-not-great engineer who's just pulling a paycheck is heavily underestimated. We're the ones making the world go round.

You've never heard of the thing I work on, but if enough of us stop working on it lots of things people use and want every day will stop working. That's not a brag, just a reflection of how things are. Not every problem needs a billionaire or a rockstar. Some problems just need a few moderately dedicated, reasonably smart people, and a little time.

I agree so very much with not only your framing, but that of the original tweet(s) and the distillation formed by my own experience.

I'm proximate to development (information security/penetration tester). After university, my journey to graduate neophyticism had begun. As such, my exposure to the techniques, tools, and glue that helped build this industry was certainly sitting high up on the shoulders of giants. And I wanted to be up there. I deeply yearned (and if I'm going to be honest with myself as I write this, perhaps a small part of my still does) to be in the same group as these folks. But it just hasn't happened yet, and I still kick ass at what I do. I know how to use the tools, understand them, write miniature bastardized versions of a subset of functions when need be. I know the space, understand it (as much as someone who has ~10 years of experience, so granted a long way to go :)).

I'm just....average. And that's okay.

I'm a Pascal programmer, I'm ok at it. I look at the newer stuff that's come down the pike in the 40 years I've been programming, and there are some good things, but a lot of dreck that came with it. The biggest loss is the desktop as a primary platform for the user. Putting the internet and at least 3 different scripting languages between the user, and they data they're meant to interact with is a bad, bad idea.

It doesn't matter how good your programming skills are, if you have available time, and use it to clean up problems as you notice them, paying off your technical debt, and clearly marking any that remains with clear and complete comments noting the problems that remain. It's like leaving signs around minefields, it might save your own hide some day.

I can write anything, I've written in lots of languages, but none of them match my style of thinking better than Pascal. I like the fact that := is hard to mix up with =. I like the fact that you can only assign one thing at a time. I like that strings just deal with allocation on their own (free pascal/lazarus/delphi all do this). You almost never have to deal with pointers.

If you want code that is legible years later, I'm your guy. If you want the fastest possible implementation in language X, good luck.

Being a good workman, and doing your craft well is nothing to be ashamed of. Be professional, don't ever build sub-standard programs, and you'll be able to sleep well.

> I have come to accept that I'm never going to invent some brand-new algorithm that changes the world. I'm probably not even going to invent a framework people like.

This thread is great, but this part felt a little weird coming from one of the co-founders of npm.

(Yes, I know a lot of people on HN don’t like Node/npm, but it does needs be remarked that they’re the most influential software ecosystem of the past decade.)

Why don't people like Node/NPM?

This is exactly who I am. I have gifts. Reversing binary trees on whiteboards isn't one of them. Know what your strengths are.

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