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A comment on I’m a Bad Developer, That’s the Only Reasonable Explanation.

Re:I’m a Bad Developer, That’s the Only Reasonable Explanation by alkonaut on Friday December 30, 2016 @03:29PM (#13287155)
Being a developer always means getting stuck on some trivial crap for a full day and going to bed angry. One simply makes up for it by those times when you create fantastic value in thirty minutes. You find the bug right away, or a new feature or deployment just falls into place smoothly. Software development is like solving math problems - it's not a continuously progressing process, no matter how much the agile priests want it to be.

This developer sounds humble. That's the most important quality a developer can have. If one becomes too humble (impostor syndrome) then one needs an environment of more encouragement. That's the job of peers and managers.

There are lots of bad developers. It's not unthinkable that this guy is a bad developer - but it's still the managers problem. Is he trained, mentored and encouraged enough?

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Re:I’m a Bad Developer, That’s the Only Reasonable Explanation by labster on Friday December 30, 2016 @07:49PM (#13288764)
And here I have thought hubris was one of the most important qualities of a good developer, along with impatience and laziness. Having a belief you can do it right is important to getting it right.
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Re:I’m a Bad Developer, That’s the Only Reasonable Explanation by alkonaut on Saturday December 31, 2016 @06:40AM (#13290650)
The humble bit is what makes sure that once you think you got it right, you actually got it right :)
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Re:I’m a Bad Developer, That’s the Only Reasonable Explanation by analog31 on Friday December 30, 2016 @07:41PM (#13288736)
It helps to have a way to erase your brain before going to bed. ;-)

For some, it's exercise, reading a book, working on a side project, cooking a nice meal. For me, it's playing music -- an activity that's intense enough that I simply have to exclude all thoughts of the problems at work, and engaged with people who don't give a rat's arse about my job.

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Re:I’m a Bad Developer, That’s the Only Reasonable Explanation by AnneDev on Saturday December 31, 2016 @01:50AM (#13289898)
article OP here. I should mention that I'm a Lead Dev for a whole team (which is why I write this anonymously).

I'm not sure if I'm humble. I sure as hell am not when I'm interviewing but I blame that on American culture.

Thanks for the feedback! :)

[ Parent | on HN ]