

Ask HN: How do you know if you're a good dev or not? - canadianeh


======
adolgert
I'm happy to recount that I solved a problem by recognizing exactly what kind
of parser was needed, but there was also that time Nate took a month of
vacation, and I'd only written 30 useful lines of code for his project when he
returned. Development is a creative process and therefore a mess of too much
effort and too much ego. So I count projects and times the client was happy,
or we got hacked the first day of deployment, or our work won the next grant.

But try this: Find someone friendly and interested and buy them a beer or an
Amazon gift card or a snazzy keyboard in return for reviewing some of your
code. Learn and get socialized, like taking your pup to the dog park. Make
yourself acceptable enough to be hirable, and maybe that's enough.

~~~
sova
Some solid words.

------
amelius
Look back at your code, see how many man-hours it has saved AND cost, subtract
the two, and there's your answer :)

------
lsiunsuex
When i sit back, look at what I've made and proclaim out loud GD that's f'ing
awesome.

Then my wife looks at me like I'm crazy and I get back to work.

------
larrymcp
At first I thought I was a great dev because my boss routinely praises me as
an unqualified genius and savior of the company! And this is like 2 to 3 times
a week.

But then I jump on HN and read all the "Signs you're a bad developer" articles
and discover that I'm actually a two-bit mediocre hack.

I dunno.

~~~
rokhayakebe
I guess you would want to take praises from someone who knows what you do. If
your boss is not a qualified engineer you may want to understand his/her
praise as "you are a great problem solver," which would be 100% correct.

------
gull
You built good software.

How good? So good no one else has even thought of, and actually written, that
software before.

~~~
sova
This.

------
MichaelCrawford
When I show my mither my name in the about box.

I commonly find that what my clients want is not what I regard myself as
ethically obligated to deliver, that is I give them what they need and not
what they ask for.

------
dudul
I use butterflies to write my code.

[https://xkcd.com/378/](https://xkcd.com/378/)

------
devhead
when your boss comes over and high fives you, slaps you on the ass and then
says way to go brah!

~~~
S4M
Your boss slaps you on the ass?

