Ask HN: how to gauge my skill as a programmer | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: how to gauge my skill as a programmer

13 pointsjwdunne8 comments

I was just wondering how I would objectively gauge my skill as a programmer. Obviously there is the effect where by everyone rates themselves as more competent than they are. Not so with me.

Sometimes I receive a confidence boost, I will feel like I'm fairly decent.

Sometimes when I can't grok something, I feel a drop and I don't feel very good about my abilities.

Nowadays I often say its impossible for me to measure as it currently stands.

To be fairly honest, it doesn't matter too much to me. I enjoy programming and learning new languages, techniques, paradigms, concepts, perspectives, etc. I spend a massive portion of my time doing so and I probably always will. I can tell without a doubt I'm a better programmer than I was 6 months ago. 6 months ago I was better than 6 months before.

I guess it's more of a validation thing too. Perhaps a lot if imposter syndrome type of stuff (I am 100% self-taught - I am a high school dropout in US terms). I'm always in doubt.

http://ask.metafilter.com/235568/How-do-you-know-if-you-are-... http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41473/how-can... http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/

Learn how to do quality and security checks to become a better programmer.

Learn some higher math and science to learn better algorithms and formulas.

Check out Khan Academy for the math and science: https://www.khanacademy.org/

I hold two university degrees, one in computer science and one in business management. I have written mostly business apps. That is where the money really is at.

You pick the best libraries to support your project, if you write libraries yourself you are a system developer. You want to be a business app developer because it doesn't require the advanced math and science a system developer needs. Business math isn't that hard to learn it is just basic math and statistics. All you need know is Algebra.

If you want to do video games learn advanced math and physics.

Don't drop your confidence, or you'll end up disabled like me. I am trying to get my confidence back.

One thing will always be true, never stop learning. Learn from your mistakes and failures by first admitting to them and then figuring out how to fix them.

Good luck, friend.

  To know how good you are at something requires the same 
  skills as it does to be good at that thing. Which means
  if you are absolutely hopeless at something you lack
  exactly the skills that you need to know that you are 
  absolutely hopeless at it.

  And this is a profound discovery. That most people who 
  have absolutely no idea what they're doing have no idea 
  that they have no idea what they're doing. It explains a 
  great deal of life. It explains particularly Hollywood.

  - John Cleese

I found this to be quite interesting - the Programmer Competency Matrix. It's hard to be honest with yourself with these things, but worth a look anyway:

http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/

Have a long-term piece of code that belongs to you. Keep improving this over the time. Host the code online. Upgrade as technologies change. You will always be able to show it (off) to prove you are good.

I think a good way to gauge your skills is to do job hunting, even if you don't need a job, go on a couple of interviews. Have them evaluate your work and very soon you will be able to gauge your skills, you will also discover things you need to improve on. You can try using recruiters as they can put you in a lot of job interviews very fast.

Interview. I was in SF for a month and interviewed in a few places. Now I know I know nothing : )

Google Code Jam: https://code.google.com/codejam/ Topcoder.

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