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Programmer Competency Matrix

starling-software.com

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Re: Programmer Competency Matrix

#91

Post by Terretta »

Jun8 wrote: post #72
tptacek wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a great quote. I wonder where it came from.

This is a quote I use very often! As with many other great quotes, I think it originates in English from Trevanian's Shibumi (when Otake-san, the Go master is giving his final teaching to Nicholai): Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience — twenty times. Most probably Trevanian has drawn upon some other source, t…

My father said this to me before 1979.

Re: Programmer Competency Matrix

#92

Post by zem »

maybe it's just because i'm mostly an algorithms guy, but the bar for "O(log n)" systems programming seemed to be somewhat higher than that for datastructures and algorithms. and having "author of framework" be on the same level is another huge leap.

Re: Programmer Competency Matrix

#93

Post by jaredsohn »

Zimahl wrote: post #76
lucian1900 wrote: post #11

Many are biased (objects > functions), several are not useful and a few are plain wrong. Meh.

Agreed. I'm not sure how 'Source Code Version Control' and 'Build Automation' is anywhere near the words 'Software Engineering'. And 'Automated Testing' isn't a given at a lot of shops. Professionally, I've never set up version control. It's there when I start the job, it'll be there when I leave. I've branched and merged but a lot of times this is handled by a build manager. Build automation I have never expressly d…

> I'm not sure how 'Source Code Version Control' and 'Build Automation' is anywhere near the words 'Software Engineering'.

I'm not sure how they couldn't be. True, they are not a part of computer science, but both are very helpful to be able to build software efficiently (i.e. software engineering). The places I've worked tend to not have build managers (and the one time there was one, the person wasn't technical and needed 'help' from engineering, to have sane policies and organization). Both skills are also important if you want to launch something -- either a personal project (open source or otherwise), or on a small team at a startup.

Re: Programmer Competency Matrix

#94

Post by ww520 »

Swizec wrote: post #44
andrewvc wrote: post #31

This is someone's (very arbitrary) opinion in a grid. I hope you don't actually interview people. Figuring out someone's skill level is a soft science; it takes months after a hire to really know where someone is. Some people I know are great at fixing bugs but have narrow language experience. They're damn valuable. Others integrate well into teams and provide great product feedback. Where's that on here? Experience…

Some people have 10 years of experience. Others have 1 year of experience 10 times.

The latter one must be an expert on the few things they do.

Re: Programmer Competency Matrix

#95

Post by ww520 »

It covers a good section of the competency area and kudos for putting it together. It's certainly much better than the puzzle type questions.

It's kind of generous in its rating for advance though. May be there should be a level for expert. But good work.

Re: Programmer Competency Matrix

#96

Post by gridspy »

lathamcity wrote: post #74

Here's mine: Level 0: Saw the post title and didn't think he needed to look at it because he was so confident in his abilities already. Level 1: Read the post, noticed a lot that he didn't know but didn't intend to do anything about it. Level 2: Read the post and went out and learned everything in it that he didn't know. Level 3: Read the post, figured out which things from it he didn't know but might need to or want…

Nice.

Is there a level for "Skimmed the first part of the post and then went back to working on his/her startup" ?

Re: Programmer Competency Matrix

#97

Post by arbuge »

This is a rather narrow viewpoint of what makes a great programmer in my opinion. One completely missed element here is the ability to track organizational complexity. For example, you have a site with 100,000 lines of code. Making one change somewhere affects 10 other things elsewhere, each of which might affect another 10 things. Keeping track of all that is what I'm talking about. Same skill you find in great chip (integrated circuit) designers. Personally I think it's far more important than some of the concepts here, which focus mainly on algorithm-level stuff.

Re: Programmer Competency Matrix

#98

Post by jebblue »

dotborg wrote: post #82
Xcelerate wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be a "hobby" but I've been doing it for 12 years, made money off of it, and would argue that I probably know more (theoretical and practical) than your average bachelor's grad in CS. And I don't know where this "random info on the internet" came from. My knowledge comes from algorithm textbooks or papers from university websites. Why the vitriol?

there are few more levels of knowledge and experience to achieve in order to improve overall quality of your work and that's the point of this article, you can ALWAYS achieve your target in a better way

You still seem to be advancing your original point that hobby programming or side projects is an inferior pursuit relative to professional programming. McAfee was a shareware project, eBay was written by Pierre in a matter of days. I've seen many projects that were of much higher quality than many professional enterprise and startup projects.

Re: Programmer Competency Matrix

#99

Post by chernevik »

Jun8 wrote: post #72
tptacek wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a great quote. I wonder where it came from.

This is a quote I use very often! As with many other great quotes, I think it originates in English from Trevanian's Shibumi (when Otake-san, the Go master is giving his final teaching to Nicholai): Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience — twenty times. Most probably Trevanian has drawn upon some other source, t…

It's an ok potboiler that relies ever-more improbable plot devices.

It's also impossibly incorrect politically -- so transparently so that I think it's essentially harmless. But if you don't understand why some people would feel that why you really should watch your step.

Re: Programmer Competency Matrix

#100

Post by jakejake »

andrewvc wrote: post #31

This is someone's (very arbitrary) opinion in a grid. I hope you don't actually interview people. Figuring out someone's skill level is a soft science; it takes months after a hire to really know where someone is. Some people I know are great at fixing bugs but have narrow language experience. They're damn valuable. Others integrate well into teams and provide great product feedback. Where's that on here? Experience…

It's a good list of skills. I don't find them all so linear, I'm sure most of us have bits and pieces from all of the squares, even though it says explicitly that you have to know all of the proceeding skills in order to move to the next column.

I can't help thinking when I read these lists, though, that they probably favor the author's particular skill-set and experience. Maybe not necessarily the author's current state, but perhaps where they'd like to go or what skills they aspire to have.

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