Ask HN: How do you define a 'top developer'?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5860817

by marcosscriven • 13 years ago

1 3 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Someone said to me recently that if I was a 'top developer', that they could get me a job easily.

It always struck me as presumptuous describing oneself as in some way the best - so was curious what my fellow HNers thought?

Do you describe yourself as a 'top developer'? How do you define it?

digitalzombie• 13 years ago

Using vocab correctly.

I got a couple of people that use function and method word interchangeably and thinks a programming language reserve word is a method.

Biggest issue I have is the fact that they don't use the vocab correct. It abstract and black box a concept at a higher level, so you don't have to spend 20 words describing a concept. Instead of describing closure you can just say closure and just focus on solving the actual solution instead of the nitty gritty mechanic.

Ability to be humble and admit that they don't know it, ask questions about it, and not bullshit and pretend as if they know it.

We hired a person that said he was a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 in knowing jQuery. Dude wrote a parser for json in 50 lines in one of his javascript code. He did the same think for PHP but to parse xml files.

This isn't out of arrogrance, it's the fact that you can bullshit to your peer and thinks they're stupid. Like not only can you not trust yourself to learn from your colleague but they're full of it. They rather choose to pretend to know it instead of actually learning and improving upon their craft. Top developer? More like top bser for those management type position.

sdoryapp• 13 years ago

A 'top developer' is a relative term. I used to be a top developer few years back at my startups coding and developing interfaces, backend, APIs and everything in between. I would understand design, database and UI, as well as the best implementation methods and optimize code. However, there were times, when you just had to release something and get things done. So, my perspective, a 'top developer' is the CEO of development who can get things done and still think of scaling and long term viability of the code.

rubberband• 13 years ago

I agree that it's presumptuous to give yourself big ol' gold star, as a "top developer".

I don't consider myself one, but if I had to define it, I would say that they were within the top 10-20% percent of whatever arbitrary metrics are most important to you. If you want a "top Python developer", I would expect a nice Github (or whatever) profile with tons of relevant work. If you want a "top enterprise C++ developer", I would expect they have a long list of successful projects, and be able to walk you through the intricacies of each.

To me, it's highly contextual.

Ask HN: How do you define a 'top developer'?

Related Stories