Wednesday, June 17, 2009

What's in a programmer's head

I would like to say "humility", as there should be in other professionals. Instead, what I most experience is hubris, which can be good - but it can also hinder you.

That's why we should always listen to people who criticizes us, especially if they know us well (and if I may add, when they stop firing at us it'll mean they don't care anymore, and that would be very bad). To quote Senator Amidala:

Our mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults than we would like... it is the only way we can grow.

I am reading several resumes, and I often find sentences like "five years experience in (you name it)". What I would like to know in advance is if that means "I've constantly grown in the last five years" or "I've repeated the same six months experience ten times". I'll let you reckon which is the most frequent case.

3 comments:

Bluebabbler said...

Well, IMHO I think that even if you have repeated the same experience ten times, you (probably) have evolved enough to approach the same experience better and better.

Unknown said...

You're perfectly right... as a matter of fact in that case you would be classified in the other group ;-)

What I mean when I say "repeat the same experience ten times" is not "you did the same things ten times" (after all programmers program... and not only ten times, but a million times) but "despite you did it ten times, each time it was just like the first one, and none of them added a single bit to your craftsmanship".

Sorry for being unclear or misleading, I hope I have made my point clear.

Bluebabbler said...

That's perfectly clear, thank you for the post !