I am a quite good bad programmer

I find somethings actually strange. Per se, checking my quality as a developer with job interview questions I will receive a not so high grade. I would say between 5 to 7 out of 10. Not brilliant. But as a developer I think I am actually really good.

I never "studied" computer science in a regular way, but I am in the industry more than 20 years. I started as a hacker, reverse engineering, assembly code, moved to C and C++ and now web development in Node.JS, Go (golang) and Rust and Vanilla JS. Touched of course Python and Arduino and Raspberry PI.

I find it that my code and overall look as much better (if I can be a bit non modest for a second) than other developers even seniors.

- My code is highly readable with good comments and other can take over my code responsibility quite easily

- My code runs (and also complies) faster than other - I understands the usage of Hash / Map instead of searching arrays and many other small things that actually enhance the code performance

- I know how to KISS (Keep it stupid and simple) and so I am able to write complicated software because the basic is simple and separated so my feasible to comprehend

- I understands Object Oriented correctly and knows where to use it and how and when to avoid it

- I know not to search always the latest new shiny thing (library or framework) and use legacy software that actually do the job when needed without complications

- I understand how the computer works, from BIOS, BUS to OS (Linux and Windows internals)

- I have (again if I may say) good product skills and some UX guts which helps me manage things on my own

All of this together allowed me to build and sell already two startups. Develop and maintain easily many web sites and SaaS which creates me nice passive income (such as https://gematrix.org).

So am I a good or bad programmer? - Still I will score quite low in job interview questions ...

I was going to comment something about how with modern tooling a lot of people (including me) can write working apps without being too advanced but from your description it sounds like you know quite a lot.

I don't think you have to take the label "bad programmer" because you don't ace job interviews. Those are contrived games anyway, if you practice you can learn to ace them but from your position it doesn't sound nessecary.

I'll also throw out that it's not binary in the other direction either.

There is always more to learn and as long as it's still fun I find that reading one more technical book usually does add value somewhere I wasn't expecting.

This is so weird. Aren’t you just selecting for obedience and unnecessary hoop jumping? It seems like this would also select the kind of engineers who aren’t willing to say “no, that’s a dumb approach, we shouldn’t do that, here’s an alternative”?

When I was a Junior dev one of the first lessons my boss taught me was to always always speak up if something looked off to me. Maybe I’d get an explanation and be enlightened or maybe I’d actually sniffed out a mistake or code smell. It always seemed like a win win.

But if the entire job is based on “here swallow this bullshit pill before you’re let in the door”, isn’t it going to be hard to get the devs who are allergic to bullshit?

Job interviews have a very questionable form of gatekeeping. But it is a very well documented form of gatekeeping. If you want to get good grades at job inteviews, you can practice how to pass that test... I do agree it doesn't reflect the quality of developer you are, but it is what it is...

if what u say is truth then you are undoubtedly a good programmer - pragmatic people who are thoughtful of others (users and maintainers) are clearly good.

this is the bizarre thing - these are qualities that actually make a good product developer, but many companies pretend that they are hiring people who will be coming up with new algorithms and not just make db records when someone clicks or submits a form.