Post by @inthehands@hachyderm.io

The “rockstar developer” is a pernicious myth, even when there is somebody who’s unusually experienced or skillful.

I have my Software Design and Development students listen to this audio, particularly the middle portion where the dev tells the story:
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-worst-video-game-ever/

The thing I love about this story is that he was actually incredibly good at it and succeeded at his assigned task under impossible odds — and all that did was dig the company in a deeper hole. If he’s been unable to deliver on time, it might have saved the company (at least temporarily).

99% Invisible

The Worst Video Game Ever - 99% Invisible

Deep within the National Museum of American History’s vaults is a battered Atari case containing what’s known as “the worst video game of all time.” The game is E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and it was so bad that not even the might of Steven Spielberg could save it. It was so loathsome that all remaining copies

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your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦

@[email protected] 2 wk. ago

ugh, don't know why that got posted as quiet public.

anyways…

knowing what i know about software development, still won’t call myself a sotware developer. don't have the patience to develop a whole application from scratch.

my love for coding started with the web. am a web developer, that will hack a FLOSS backend so i can have fun styling the frontend. i do have SysAdmin skills, hacking unwanted computers into servers.

i may not dress like it, but with computers, am punk as fuck.

Paul Cantrell

@[email protected] 2 wk. ago

@blogdiva

Some gentle Online Friend advice, wearing my Very Fancy Computer Science Professor with Decades of Industry Experience hat, to you and everyone on Fedi:

Get the fuck over your coding imposter syndrome. You rock.

I've met sooooo many awesome developers who think they're not Real Developers because they never studied CS. I've met sooooo many awesome CS profs who think they're not Real Developers because they don't have enough practical experience. It goes on and on and fucking on: Not Real because they only write Javascript and not C. Not Real because they only write C and don't know web dev. Not Real because they only know web dev and not game dev. Because they've never written an operating system from scratch, because their software never made a billion dollars, because they only know how to write and not deploy, deploy but not write, code but not design…“my skill doesn't count, my expertise doesn't count, my experience doesn't count, the specific things I did don't count….”

What the hell, people?? Why do we do this to ourselves?! It takes a village to raise a software! If you are doing anything, anything at all, that has you wrangling code* enough to get angry at it, then you are a real developer, period. All the things you don't already know are just beautiful things you might choose to learn one day. Or not.

Sorry for ranting in your replies, Liza! This one just really gets my hackles up. Fuck the gatekeeping. Coding is for humans.

––––––
* (where “code” means any unambiguous machine-readable language, not just those other languages you think are Real Programming)

econads

@[email protected] 2 wk. ago

@inthehands
I used to have imposter syndrome and then I worked in the industry for 15 years and realised there are a lot of terrible developers out there so I might not be a rockstar but I surely was much better than a lot of the industry.

@blogdiva

Paul Cantrell

@[email protected] 2 wk. ago

@econads @blogdiva

The “rockstar developer” is a pernicious myth, even when there is somebody who’s unusually experienced or skillful.

99% Invisible

The Worst Video Game Ever - 99% Invisible

3+ more replies

your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦

@[email protected] 2 wk. ago

@inthehands i love you for writing this. it’s exactly what i needed to hear. thank you 🥲

Seiðr

@[email protected] 2 wk. ago

@blogdiva @inthehands Look, my experience with programming is limited to R and some Python and SQL (yes, statistics, or how some years ago it was called "big data"), and not a lot, at that, but I got this clear: your code is good if 1) you get it to do what you need it to, even if you had to debug it n times; 2) it's as parsimonious* as possible; and 3) you read it 5** years later and understand wtf you were doing.

*Use as few steps as <you> can
**Or next year or the following…

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Paul Cantrell

@[email protected] 2 wk. ago

@blogdiva

Yes!! Go forth and be awesome!!