Confessions of a mediocre programmer
Date: March 9th, 2010
Author: Alan Norton
Alan Norton reveals how he makes the best of his average coding skills to survive as a mediocre programmer.
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I have always enjoyed writing code, not because I was good at it, but in part because it was such a challenge. I found no thrill in commanding a personal computer to display “Hello World!†on a monitor. Seeing three red cherries or the Ace and Jack of spades show up on a monitor is a different matter entirely. One of the first programs I wrote out of college was a slot machine program written in Northstar Basic for the Northstar Horizon, followed by a graphics-based Blackjack program written for the Northstar Advantage.
As much as I enjoy programming, I must in all honesty admit that I am a mediocre programmer who has always found a way to get to the big payoff — that is, when the program ran without syntax errors and something magical happened. It is not too surprising then that I never worked as a programmer per se; I found my talents more in line with those needed to be a good developer. But before we go any further, I'll give you my definition of a mediocre programmer.
Mediocre programmer - A programmer who has a limited toolset. He knows the syntax of only the simplest commands, but he knows where to find the syntax for more complex commands. He doesn't know how to write the most efficient code, but he knows how to rewrite and test the code for greater efficiency if he must. He runs into more roadblocks along his passage to success, but he views each as a challenge and is confident that he will find a path around each roadblock. He may take longer to get there, but he always reaches his goal. He doesn't know how to create a DLL, but he knows he can if necessary. Like most programmers, he doesn't particularly like documenting his work but does so anyway because he is a professional.
thanks for posting this lol
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