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Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern

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What is your best skill as a developer?

Whether it is a specific enough technical expertise, or just part of the craft you do well?

Oldest comments (102)

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sherrydays profile image
Sherry Day

Writing documentation is probably the thing that stands out above some of my other skills.

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valenciawhite profile image
Valencia White

I would love to read a blog post by you going over better documentation skills as a new developer! It doesn't get talked about enough and there seems to be no clear cut way of how one should go about writing it. โœจ

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jeremyf profile image
Jeremy Friesen

That's something I hadn't considered, but am now considering.

Perhaps there's something to glean from my posts tagged with documentation? takeonrules.com/tags/documentation/

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valenciawhite profile image
Valencia White

omgoodness what a collection! Thank you!

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jeremyf profile image
Jeremy Friesen

Thank you for prompting me.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
๐’ŽWii ๐Ÿณ๏ธโ€โšง๏ธ • Edited

meanwhile, the documentation I write is just ๐Ÿคข๐Ÿคฎ

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dinerdas profile image
Diner Das

Not a hard skill, but I feel like I'm good at over-communicating with my team. It's about consistency.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I think depending on the situation and opportunity at hand, my best skills are: Solving problems from scratch, i.e. greenfield projects.

But then at the other end of the spectrum, I fancy myself a really good debugger.

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cerchie profile image
Lucia Cerchie

I'd love to see a post from you about your top considerations for greenfield projects!

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Ricardo Sueiras

I think listening and knowing the right questions to ask (so we can get to a better problem definition) is probably my super power. I would probably add documentation/blogging and simplifying the complex as probably other things I think I am pretty good at.

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Hrn Svncใƒใƒซใƒณ

Abstracting complex things and explaining it the easy way.
Also adapting to change and new technologies I guess.

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bugmagnet profile image
Bruce Axtens • Edited

Creating problems. Sure, I could say that problem solving is my best skill (and it probably is), but the fact is I also create problems by developing tech that then needs to be maintained, fine-tuned, updated, rewritten, replaced, re-thought. There are a few thousand lines of C# and JavaScript processing sales leads for two car-sales companies. I listened, thought, developed but now I'm stuck with a fairly constant regime of maintain, fine-tune, update that I can't get away from. So maybe my best skills as a developer are dogged persistence and faithfulness to the product.

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Marissa B

Starts out with "creating problems" and finishes with "dogged persistence". Add "pivoting while marketing self" to your skills list too :P

I feel that though. You create a cool utility or tool and now it's your child.

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atulcodex profile image
๐Ÿšฉ Atul Prajapati ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ

nice

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett ๐ŸŒ€

Whats that old saying, Gotta break a few million itterations to make a program

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy ๐ŸŽ–๏ธ

Not estimating, and ignoring deadlines

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett ๐ŸŒ€

Some deadlines go away on thier own and some things cannot be known :) devils advocate here

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mrpaulishaili profile image
Paul C. Ishaili

Critical thinking, lean coding

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rubinelezi profile image
Rubin Elezi

Debugging

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rawalprashant profile image
Prashant Raval

I am in best of my learning skill

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Ashwin Hariharan

My best skill would be to break down hard-to-understand technical concepts in a way that makes sense for junior developers & even non-tech folks.

Probably the reason why I could transition from a pure software engineering role to DevRel! ๐Ÿ˜Ž

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fennecdjay profile image
Jรฉrรฉmie Astor

not sure that's really a skill but I'm perfectly honest when I don't know smth or when the solution is unclear at some point.

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cerchie profile image
Lucia Cerchie

Communication.

Understanding that the same word, in the same context, but used by a different person, can mean completely different things.

Understanding that I may not understand the full context of a technical tool or a person's perspective, and knowing what questions to ask to get there (sometimes that very question is, "What are the best questions to ask?").

Understanding that sometimes concepts are not complex, they're just hidden behind a bunch of domain-specific vocabulary. More than that, I make these kinds of concepts more accessible to others.

This is how I got into tech without a CS degree, and this is how I'll stay in it.

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cerchie profile image
Lucia Cerchie

Go Anjan!

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett ๐ŸŒ€

My ability to relax and stop working

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Pandademic

Hahahahaha ! The most important thing of all!

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett ๐ŸŒ€

I used to want to be the very best frontend developer, like a Pokรฉmon trainer. I had to catch them all, but now I just want to chill and enjoy hobbies, play with my son and be a smarter developer not work harder

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Sarthak Dwivedi • Edited

Well, I would often start rocking on the chair relaxing, thinking solutions without putting any pressure or let fear of completing things on time take over. This worked really well in most cases but did disturbed others and few asked what are you so relaxed about? Why are you rocking and spinning on the the chair for?

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett ๐ŸŒ€

Honestly, get out doors that's the best way to solve problems, I used to do my best work on the way home

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globalkonvict profile image
Sarthak Dwivedi

I will try it, I guess other than laziness there's no excuse to just take a short walk. Some problem requires attending to and some are solved in mind, with that distinction I would say I could definitely use going for a short walk for problem solved using mind alone.

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atulcodex profile image
๐Ÿšฉ Atul Prajapati ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ

You are the real human, peace

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Adam Crockett ๐ŸŒ€

And to you Atul

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atulcodex profile image
๐Ÿšฉ Atul Prajapati ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ

ummm, I like to make responsive designs and till now I have created lots of plan for different software and tools to help our humanity.