

Ask HN: How do you know if you're becoming a better hacker? - NewWorldOrder

Do you rely on the input of others, or do you just trust yourself to make a fair assessment?
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bootload
_"... How do you know if you're becoming a better hacker? ..."_

Maybe this article (Great Hackers: Recognition) might help ~
<http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html>

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ScottWhigham
This strikes me as just a weird question; one of those, "What kind of person
asks that question?" type of questions (and I mean no offense by that lol).

It's like asking, "Am I pretty/handsome?" Well, do people tell you that you
are? Do you notice people that you think are pretty/handsome staring at you?
If so, there's a chance you are.

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NewWorldOrder
The question is meant in a different vein. This article
[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/10/30/8391794/index.htm)
suggests that people that become "great" practice deliberately over a long
period of time.

Measuring how much better you're becoming is easier in some practices than in
others. Assuming everybody wants to become great hackers, how can you practice
deliberately such that you reach this "greatness?" Without some way of
measuring how good you're becoming this is pretty difficult to do.

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pmorici
Beware the Dunning-Kruger effect

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Tichy
I like this quote from the Wikipedia article:

"Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy."

It's such a nice formulation ;-)

