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Abhishek Sharma
Abhishek Sharma

Posted on • Edited on

How do you overcome the feeling of not being as cool as the other DEVs?

Top comments (14)

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bouzaf profile image
Felipe

For me, cool devs are the ones that promote a good environment in the communities they participate in. So if you welcome new members, help and does not make fun of the "simple" questions you are already making the world better.

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MarvelousWololo

you just let it go. you just realise people have different opinions on what is cool and you will realize that there are even people that think you are cool. your story is what makes you cool. and how you decide to share that with other people or not.

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Christian Lutz

How do you define a "cool developer"?

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Abhishek Sharma

People who are making projects impacting the community and making the world better.

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Christian Lutz

Often the problem is comparing yourself to others. You said cool devs are people who making projects, impacting the community and making the world better. So simply do it no matter what others think of it. Your feeling that you're not as cool as other devs is only in your head. Know what you want to achieve and work on it consistently. That is, what cool devs do anyway.

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Vojtech Ruzicka

I guess by "making projects impacting the community and making the world better" :) If it's something you're interested in you should get started getting involved in the community. Try various approaches such as blogging / stack overflow answers / oss contribution/ ...

Personally, I would start with a simple blog. After some time the rest will come naturally. You'll meet new people, find interesting projects, maybe get invited to talk at local meetups and so on.

Just be prepared that it takes a lot of time and effort. And remember - it is better to start small and gradually improve rather than start never :)

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alephthoughts profile image
Abhishek Sharma

"it is better to start small and gradually improve rather than start never" - so true!

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DrBearhands

I have yet to meet such a person.

Usually when somebody is making such claims, it's all smoke and mirrors, though they might believe it themselves.

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Evan Plaice

Do something 'cool'

Learn something to such a high degree of depth that your insight becomes inherently valuable/interesting to other devs.

For example. Most devs understand BigO but very very few understand how that applies to parsing different types of grammars.

To learn something like this

  1. Never, ever blindly copy/paste code or ideas

  2. When sourcing code from others, rewrite, refactor, break the code until you have a deep understanding of how it works

  3. Do the work. Research like a researcher, not a student. Look for holes, missing details, better sources, be skeptical.

  4. Come up with something useful that other devs will actually use. Devs complain about pain points in devemopment. Complaints = opportunities.

  5. Build something useful. Share the hell out of it.

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alephthoughts profile image
Abhishek Sharma

Great advice. Thank you.

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Mohammed Samgan Khan

everyone is fighting his/her own uphill battles. don't worry, as the smart people say speed doesn't matter its the consistency which matters.

"it doesn't matter how fast you drive there will always be other cars in front of you. Just keep on going you will reach the destination."

I use this theory to keep me in check. hope this will help you too.

PS: I call it the highway theory.

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Ross Henderson

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." - Lao Tzu.

As long as you're taking a step each day, then one day maybe you'll see a road you can go down in which you can do these things.

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Gabriel Toma

Never let this feeling to drive you. You should never care about others. Stick on what you have to do and never give up.

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Chris James

As much as lots of people like to treat it like one, being a software developer doesn't have to be a popularity contest