

The Most Important Skill of Programmer - jakubgarfield
http://chodounsky.net/2013/08/16/the-most-important-skill-of-programmer/

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onion2k
Communication is a very important skill - it's vital that a dev can
communicate their thoughts to other people. If you want a productive team,
having people who understand how to communicate is critical. But, ultimately,
you can get by without that skill as a developer. I know many, many developers
who do. Acting like a black box - specification in, working code out - can
work for a developer. You'll never go very high up the corporate ladder, but
some people are fine with that. Consequently, I think there's something more
important that makes you a brilliant developer if you have it: Organisation.

If you want code that works, is maintainable, it easy to understand, to read
and to use, employ someone who is naturally well organised. Badly organised
code is the number one thing that makes projects late and products clunky.
Little things like maintaining variable names across code blocks, using the
same conventions across entire projects, actually commenting and documenting
things, writing tests before writing code - those are organisational skills,
and they make the difference between a good project and a brilliant project.

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henrik_w
So true. It sounds so mundane, but most of the code in most of the projects is
dead simple. It's the sheer volume of it makes the organizing of it very
important. You don't have to be a genius to do it, but it takes discipline.

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pimentel
I was expecting "the ability to focus". You can have the greatest programming
skills, but if you can't focus in doing what you need to do, it won't get done
when it needs to.

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jheriko
i immediately think 'the ability to learn'.

this is much truer in my mind, since continuously learning to communicate
better is just one small thing you get from having that...

its important to be unrestricted by what you know - in every field

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manojlds
The ability to unlearn is important as well.

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jrm2k6
Can you give an example about that? I like this idea but I am not sure I can
picture it.

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manojlds
For example the move to relational databases to NoSQL could mean unlearning
some concepts you swear by, and starting from a clean slate.

