I'm afraid I will always be a mediocre programmer. How can I become better?
Everyday on HN I see some coder come up with an amazing algorithm/piece of code/software, and I think to myself "WOW, that is brilliant" and the next thought is "I will never be as good as these guys".
Can you give me any advice?
P.S My daily job involves php/js, but I'm trying to move on from them to some other language (Learning GO now).
Thank you.
Now imagine there are 10k developers that post stuff to HN. Each would only need to produce something amazing every 30 YEARS to get something on the front page!
It's hard to see your own improvement -- your day-to-day performance doesn't seem to be any different. On the internet, it seems like everyone is doing cool stuff all the time and you are falling behind. You aren't alone, I get this feeling all the time; we are always our own toughest critic and usually the last ones to praise ourselves.
So don't sweat it! If you make something awesome in the next few years, you are ahead of the curve :) Why not start today?
Take an hour this week to look back at your own year's accomplishments and I think you'll find that you've done and learned more than you thought.
There's just one thing you have to do -- think.
Just always keep your eyes open to the things that don't work as well as they should, and work to improve them. Just start. Start small. Build out the core, then go bigger. Let it consume you.
A million great ideas come out of any kind of work you feel passionate about. Just find something that sucks and improve it. Once you get the ball rolling you'll have more ideas than you could build in a lifetime.
But, your point, it's really easy to be creative without it, I would argue against.
You can't teach creativity. You can't learn creativity. Creativity is something you're born with and developed subconsciously. You can't consciously be creative. You can consciously think out of the box, sure, but as a true creative individual myself, there's such a fine line between the two.
TLDR. Try your best and stop worrying about the outcome. If you can become a great programmer you will, if can't you won't.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...
It's a book that will permanently upgrade your perspective on creating software, in a way that's language-agnostic. To start, get and install MIT-Scheme and Emacs, then follow along with the videos. And/or dive into the book and do the exercises.
Also, history makes legends. People don't feel like legends at the time of their making. Some of the greatest stories in tech were created by people who were mediocre coders, had no idea what they were doing and probably wouldn't have been doing it if they knew any better. The reason these people turned into legends is because they nailed far more important elements than brilliant coding. They could sell, they could market, they could ship code and they were relentless. Grinders are ugly, but they are the engines that drive the world.
"The impostor syndrome, sometimes called impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome, is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be."
Feeling "as if you don't belong" or that you were falsely placed in a position (by accident, etc.) is a very common feeling among high-achieving students and adults (common, for example, in medical schools and graduate programs).
to the OP: you are clearly achieving success in your career (know several languages, challenging yourself to additional), and the fact that you read HN and have a sense of what makes a project great is important. There's been good practical advice elsewhere in this thread, but I feel that it's important to point out that your underlying feelings fall under a broadly typical pattern as well.
If it's not more than a year or two ago, then you're a constantly improving developer and I wouldn't be too concerned. However if you're still writing things exactly the same way 5 years later, you're either not learning, or you've got some awesome niche where you're almost the only VBA developer in your town and you're charging out at $1000+/day. ;-)
For me, probably 90% of the time, I love programming for the fact that there's always cool stuff to learn. But the other 10% of the time, I hate programming because you've always got to learn new stuff. (only half-joking... so it's realistically 5%)
It's an awesome field to be part of. You don't necessarily need to compare yourself to the gurus. I'll never ever be a Carmack/Torvolds/Knuth... But in my field, I'm pretty decent and am appreciated by my clients.
And the day I stop learning is the day I'm dead.
I can, however, offer you some take-aways I've come up with trying to answer that question for myself. Though I caution you that adopting my solutions to the problem are as likely to help you as wearing my glasses is to correct your vision. (they might be the same prescription but probably aren't)
Firstly, commit yourself to stop comparing your life to the best parts of other people's lives. You get to read about the successes of others, it's far less common to read about their failures. (Unless the failure is presented as a contrast or starting point to show off a later success). This skews your thinking into believing that everyone else is producing all this wonderful stuff while you're just grinding out crap.
Compare yourself against your past self, not other people. Bonus points to commit to that comparison across every aspect of your life and not just your programming ability.
Secondly, decide what you mean by being a "better" developer. What does that mean exactly? The ability to work in multiple languages? Having a deep knowledge of one language? Having a large portfolio of completed projects? Something else?
Do you even really want to be "better" or do you really want recognition or more money or something else?
Thirdly, take the long view and take small steps consistent with achieving your big goal. Example: if you want the ability to work in multiple languages, take the small step of choosing ONE new one and spending 6 months or a year digging into it. Think of a fun little project and see if you can implement it using that language. Repeat that step for a different language for another 6~12 months. How many repeats/years of that will result in you become proficient in multiple languages? If you want, you can combo that with writing up your experience in a blog presenting it to a tech group... it seems to me that combo cold easily result in gaining reputation, expanding your portfolio, opening you up to job offers (more money), etc.
What do you care if it takes you 5 years to accomplish all that? What else were you going to do with that time? (and if using that time for something else would have a higher value for you then forget about being a "better" programmer and instead spend the time on whatever else fulfills you and makes you happy)
It's how we're made (humans).
Note that most of the stuff companies release isn't all that special. But it sells. Programming is never really going to be 'won' - marketing wins all the time. A lot of what you see around you is actually marketing. Just cover your eyes and do your best :)
I don't know if anyone reaches a point where they feel they are "brilliant" developers. Maybe if they have a big ego they do. I'm competent in certain niches, and I think that's all most developers are.
It's less about the language one uses and more about how one uses it to implement the ideas one comes up with. Amazing things can be done in any language, just some make certain ideas easier to implement than others. However, exposure to various languages (especially ones outside of the paradigm one uses the most) helps with becoming a better programmer. I'd say it would help you to have some exposure to functional languages more than Go will help. Try using a Lisp variant (common lisp, scheme, clojure, racket, etc), F# or haskell. You'll learn a number of things you can apply to imperative languages such as PHP and JS (such as lambdas/closures, monads, macros and you'll better understand recursion as well).
Due to the nature of programming it involves solving new problems all the time so there will in general almost always be someone better than you at solving problems that are important to your current project.
It has also been mentioned by almost every single recruiter I've talked to since I posted it to Github.
Personally I also try to discover best practices on how to solve problems in my domain, and learn why they are best practices.
Paying attention to the smartest and most accomplished people on the internet and matching yourself against them is likely to be hard on your ego. I recommend not doing this.
Getting better than you used to be is a more reasonable goal. (In lots of things, not just programming.)
On the programming side, studying Go sounds pretty good. Give yourself an attainable-seeming project and go after it. I think pg recommends picking something you think you can finish in a month--that sounds pretty good to me.
Good luck.
When I want to learn something new or a new language I always set up a project that seems interesting to me, this will force me to solve all problems along the road towards completing that project, when done I often know enough about the language to go ahead and use it in the real world.
You learn from mistakes but most from other people's mistakes.
Everyday on E! I see some model/movie actress and I think to myself "WOW, she is gorgeous" and the next thought is "I will never be as good looking as them".
Basing your self worth on comparisons to those you see in media is the road to ruin. Don't sweat it, and realize that you are seeing the best people on their best days on HN.
I would suggest a couple of things.
- the first habit great developers of all stripes must cultivate is self-introspection and an effort to solve problems of one's own coding style and approach.
- the second habit of a great developer is to focus on producing great documentation for your code. This is important because it helps you see the code from a less immediate and more long-term perspective.
Those two habits are the most important (and most frequently missing!) habits regarding development of development skills I can think of.
In my experience if you are deeply introspective of your own code quality and your documentation approach, you will develop a clear vision of problems that will make you a part of breakthroughs you hadn't foreseen.
I study and work hard at improving, but that doesn't "put me ahead of most"--not today, anyway.
I'd say there are two types of mediocre programmers. The first writes just ok code. It's structured ok, not great, it's efficient, but nothing special.
The second type writes ok programs. Your basic I/O stuff. The UX is ok, it works, but nothing special.
Now, which would you say you are?
The other of the potential of each of these programmers is, for the person who writes ok code, but the things they make code do are amazing! The code may not be beautiful, but they take on challenges that few others do, and it works.
The second type are the people who make mediocre products, but if you actually look at their code, it is brilliant, beautiful, perfect.
Which are you? Which would you prefer to be?
Of course, their are people who have both and that is the ultimate goal.
Learn as much as you can. Build often even if they never see the light of day. You will always improve your skills by being active in it. At some point it will make you better for you. Don't compare yourself to others. Be better than you used to be. You'll be fine.
Having a project manager that knows the development process, understand coders and know the basics of programming is so valuable both to us developers and the overall success of a project.
Also, there are a lot of different types of coding and niches. I can't wrap my head around most algorithms, I'll never be nothing but a mediocre C coder. Cryptography makes my head explode... But I know how to craft and architect a web app that scales and lives on without (too much) technical debt.
Turn your weakness into a strength.
You'll also need to be comfortable thinking about things you don't understand. If everything you do is familiar to you you're not thinking broadly enough.
that means continually practicing harder and harder problems. The very things you're not good at.
I think it's easier to explain with an analogy.
What does an Olympic figure skater do that regular skaters don't? The practice the hard moves and when they master one move, they proceed to the next move degree of difficultly.
First they practice a single axel jump.
Once they master a single axel, then they practice a double axel.
Once they master a double axel, then they start working on the triple axel.
Frankly it just takes a lot of mental toughness. To get better you always have to move on to something new that's difficult for you.
Sometimes to get anywhere, or get any recognition is to just build cool stuff, even if they won't bring you any money. Just keep building stuff on great ideas and always have quality in your work.
Amazing algorithms don't always make for maintainable code. Most of being a good programmer (like any other job) is about being hard-working, diligent, and thinking about your customers, including the programmers who will have to maintain and extend your code. Anyone can learn to do that - but the most "brilliant" coders sometimes don't.
Most of the day-to-day challenges we face require solutions that are well-thought-out, well-designed, and well-implemented. Brilliant algorithms are not a feature in and of themselves; they are only useful if they solve the actual problem at hand. And even when they do, they often need dependable, well-written, "run of the mill" code to support them and flesh them out.
I would rather work with a team of people who are diligent, dependable, and thorough than one or two brilliant aces. And I would rather my software be written by the former as well.
So try to find a small project that you really, really want to build. Then build it, and see how people use it. That is the most amazing thing as an engineer anyway. :)
It's OK to doubt yourself, but try to get a better view of your skills, accomplishments and improvement once in a while.
Your comment reposted: The other commentators haven't mentioned the fact that perhaps you could instead try to accept the fact that there is nothing wrong with being mediocre. By definition, most people are. Try to look into why you fear being mediocre? Also, perhaps you just happen to perceive yourself as mediocre? Sometime the want for change is the ill that needs to be addressed, and not the perceived faults in yourself. Good luck however you proceed!
Deliberate practice.
I'm a high-level pool player, and because of deliberate practice, I went from the worst pool player in town to maybe top 10 in approximately 1.5 years, because I practiced. Everyone else just plays with friends and in matches, never practice.
That gave me a real appreciation for the stark difference in the two approaches.