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Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern

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What's your greatest software development skill?

What are you best at? We can't all be great at everything, but we all have certain skills which set us apart. What is it for you?

Oldest comments (64)

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jaakidup profile image
Jaaki

Listening and digging into customer requirements.
Although that's more a business skill.

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Pierre Bouillon

In my opinion: detect the strenghts of each member of your team
You could gain in efficiency, allow each of them to assign tasks in which they feel great; if not in charge, you can see with the most skilled person for most of the questions you need help with on certain topics

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Fernando Doglio

I think I'm a good teacher and I enjoy explaining difficult technical concepts to those who're just starting out.
Other than that, I have debugging superpowers (I'm known to have spent days searching for am missing comma on a 3rd party library to fix a bug they were having, which ended-up affecting us).

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Jacob Evans

I also love teaching others and having mutual knowledge exchanges with people.

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Tori Crawford

I'm still a new developer and am constantly learning new things about myself in regards to code. I think my greatest skill so far has been my ability to learn new concepts and tools quickly.

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Massimo Artizzu

My colleagues treat me like a living encyclopedia.

But I don't think it's my best trait. On the contrary, it may have a detrimental effect in the long run. And I think I'm not very good at controlling this.

Maybe because I've graduated in Mathematics and not CS, I've always been pretty comfortable at grasping the big picture of a project. Never lose sight of the goal (thesis), divide the problems, follow the implications and such.

Also, I've never had any problems with mathematical formulae, logical expressions and geometry. Always useful, even in web development.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern
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Massimo Artizzu

Precisely on point.

Not that we actually face emergencies, but giving away punctual notions usually doesn't help your colleagues grow. And that's a problem, or at least a missed opportunity.
It's definitely a problem if developers start relying on that.

I've suggested my boss to let me (and other seniors too) create internal courses and classes, especially now that we're growing. I would love that, really, not to mention we could also sell the courses outside the company.

But this idea hasn't taken off yet: we can't "sacrifice" our seniors' time to that. Oh well, I hope that'll change Β―\_(ツ)_/Β―

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Erik Nelson

I feel like I'm pretty good at picking stuff up and running with it, even if I haven't had much exposure to it before. Another tangential skill I have is sticking with a difficult problem when others might give up.

I will admit though, the latter sometimes results in me being the keeper/expert on certain things that I don't love.

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Fulton Browne

Not loosing my mind when stuff doesn't work.

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Max Ong Zong Bao

Being persistent to the point until I had achieved something.

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Juha-Matti Santala

My ability to talk about technical things with non-technical people. It has allowed me to succeed in work both in product companies and in consultancies.

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Orkhan Farmanli

I am good at learning.

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reergymerej profile image
α΄™Ι˜Ι˜α΄™gYmΙ˜α΄™Ι˜j

I'm a master debugger and can figure out repro steps for even the most bizarre cases. This is probably due to my help desk origins.

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Valentin Baca

I came to say the same thing!

I worked at my college's IT dept and I feel it was key to how I debug issues.

It even helps when debugging non-tech issues. For example:

hm, my office is cold even though we put in new insulation. What provides the heat? Furnace. Is that working? Yes. Other rooms are heated. What if I'm losing heat? Possible. What changed? Insulation was put in. Noted, but how could that make it colder? Check the vent, hm. Some hot air but not nearly enough. Maybe my room is further from the furnace? Nope. Other farther rooms are heated. Time to get into the crawlspace. Turns out the insulation workers knocked the vent loose!

Same thing with code: What are the conditions the bug occurs in? What about when it doesn't? What's changed? Does it happen in all cases? If not, when does it? When did it start? ...etc etc.

It's even become a problem when watching TV. I think my debugging skill makes it easy to predict what's going to happen or be said. The plots, jokes, dialogue, and "twists" become predictable, mostly because it's easy to catch things because they only show things that are relevant. It's still enjoyable though, it's just a fun game I play. It used to drive my spouse nuts but now she's picked it up too!

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Doaa Mahely

This is very cool!

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Frederik πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’»βž‘οΈπŸŒ Creemers

I'm somewhat of an all-rounder. I haven't found something that I feel like I'm that much better at than my peers.

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David Wickes

Team morale. I bring the enthusiasm and energy, or so I'm told.

Actually it's just the fifteen double espressos I drink everyday...

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Tammy Lee

I'm creative and really good at thinking about user experience and how to engineer backwards from that.

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Sendil Kumar

Learning
Listening