

The rise of the "/Developer" — boosting your career with code - darrellsilver
http://blog.thinkful.com/post/51072583632/the-rise-of-the-developer-boosting-your-career-with

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islon
If this was d&d the article would be called "the rise of the /mage" and would
be about how could you boost your career by dual-classing mage, and my
conclusions would be the same: a warrior is not worse than a warrior/mage only
more focused and less versatile

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rubinelli
The advantage of the dual class, if you'll allow me to stretch your metaphor,
is that you can solo a mission, specially if you have the right gear (open
source software) to cover your weak points.

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islon
Agreed, but in rpgs (as in most jobs) you normally work on a team not solo.

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onion2k
Knowing how to code things makes you better able to understand what you're
asking for when it comes to adding functionality to a software product. More
understanding is definitely a Good Thing. There's much less confusion if
you're speaking the same language as the people you're requesting something
from.

The counter of that though is the old adage that "a little knowledge is a
dangerous thing". Being a part time developer with the arrogance to think you
know as much as the full-time experienced guys would be crippling in any
technical discussion.

So yeah, definitely learn to code, but don't assume that puts you on the same
footing as your team, any more than if they spent a few hours a week learning
your job.

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darrellsilver
Agreed. And that's a fair point – "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
However, coding knowledge doesn't suffer from this flaw... just look at the
tech wishlist companies maintain. The list of projects they wish their
engineers would implement for them "just to make our job a little easier" is
almost infinite. Being able to knock off a bunch of those w/in your job
instead of outsourcing it is really valuable.

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maxface
More often than not a "/developer" like this churns out virtually unusable
code. Getting tired of cleaning up after dilettantes and hacker wannabees..

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sputknick
I think you missed the point of his coding. He doesn't code part time; he uses
his knowledge of coding to enable his primary job. I think this is brilliant.
When I became a PM I was in a much better position to guide software updates
and recommend "easy win" enhancements because of my coding experience. More
people need to do this.

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ErikAugust
I agree - particularly if you are client-facing and working on a SaaS product.
You suddenly have someone who is a better pipeline between the clients and the
full-time developers.

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darrellsilver
Exactly!

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neovive
Just thought it was funny that in the photo subtitled (Team Olapic at work in
their corner of NYC’s “Projected Space”) one of the devs is on Facebook :).

