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Comment by tjic | Hacker News Reader

Great article ... err, matrix.

So, how do we stack up here?

With 15 years of experience, I SHOULD be a "3" in every category... but in reality, I'm more like 2/3 '2's and 1/3 '3's.

Chalk the shortfall up to laziness, I suppose.

How about the rest of you?

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I think this is interesting, but wouldn't judge yourself too heavily on it. I think many of the lines are far too easy to get to the '3' category, and leave considerable room above for really gifted programmers.

My results are about 1/2 three, 1/2 two, a couple ones, and nothing in the gifted category. :) Background here is some (very bad) programming before undergrad, undergrad CS from a good school, then 6 years working in enterprise software.

I really don't think this chart categorizes what makes a programmer competent though. I value the knowledge of a programmer that is extremely deep in a couple categories more than someone who has a sprinkling of everything.

Jeremy

I fall pretty dead on into the Level 1 category, though in certain areas I fall into the 2 and I think I managed a level 3 someplace... But, then I have < 2 years professional programming experience (proceeded by 3 years of management experience) and a masters in information systems, but even that is more management oriented.

Hopefully at some point I'll be able to make up for my terrible education in the areas of math and algorithms.

I rate three across the board, which simply implies to me that the author of the chart had similar interests and focus.

Yes. How about an O(1) category above log(n)?

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