
Ask HN: Are exceptional programmers highly opinionated? - afco
It seems to me that many respected programmers are highly opinionated, often imposing (implicitly or explicitly) their dogmatic view on how they and those around them write code.<p>I&#x27;ve seen &quot;best practices&quot; lauded then discarded and paradigms go in and out of vogue. Between these exceptional programmers, even opinions differ.<p>How and why can those (or any) programmers be so absolute?
Does there exist any exceptional level-headed developers?
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fspear
Not necessarily, I've been told that I'm highly opinionated but I am anything
but exceptional (average, below average at best).

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itamarst
Some of them may just _appear_ to be exceptional :)

Some of them also suffer from being misinterpreted, due to expert blind spot:
it's obvious to them what the limits of their claim are, but not to others. If
you actually presented them with a scenario where their claims don't apply
they'd say "obviously I wasn't referring to it that." More at
[https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/12/15/experts-vs-
zealots/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/12/15/experts-vs-zealots/)

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dougdescombaz
Strong convictions are the optimal way of wielding influence. The people
paying for their time don't want to hear caveats, they want to hear that their
dollars are being maximized.

