
Ask HN: How does one become a wizard? - aphextron
I&#x27;ve come to realize there are two distinct classes of developers. The &quot;mortals&quot; (myself) who spend all day working on applications glueing together libraries and business logic, and then there are the actual <i>smart</i> people (wizards) <i>making</i> all of these tools. How do I evolve into the latter?
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PaulHoule
In the old days they called this "applications programming" vs "systems
programming".

Often people think people who do the latter are smarter. They certainly know
more CS.

If you are an application programmer and smart (in terms of maximizing your
utility function) you can build on the experience you have. I can look at many
examples of tools that are not all they can be because they were written by
systems programmers who did not have applications experience.

There is honor in applications programming, especially when you are building
"the same app over and over again" because you can optimize for getting it
right quickly. Take that thinking and turn it into tools!

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bradknowles
First, you have to decide if you are going to multi-class, dual-class, or get
into one of the specialist schools of magic.

Also, being certain races helps with your intelligence boost or natural
affinity for magic — elf, gnome, etc.....

