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Discussion on: What Makes a Great Engineer/Programmer Great?

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evgeniir profile image
Evgeniy • Edited

A great engineer is an engineer who likes to do complex things, and likes to do them well.

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Kaleb M

That's true! What do you mean do them well?

Researches and takes the time to do them correctly?

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evgeniir profile image
Evgeniy • Edited

"What do you mean do them well?

Researches and takes the time to do them correctly?"

Yes, and can justify why it is correct without resorting to the "collection of best practices"(such collections are rarely good, really).

Also, Self-reflection is one of most important things to avoid getting stuck in understanding some topic.

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Kaleb M

I love the thought of self-reflection on the things great engineers do regularly. Recently, I learned Ray Dalio does this for decision making - he records decisions he makes, then reflects on them later to see how they went and what went wrong in his decision making process if they don't go well.

How do you typically track best practices?

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Sebastian Vargr

I would tend to agree, making complex things into simple things has always been my impression of mastery for the generic developer.

Juniors write computer-code, seniors write (verbose)people-code. :)

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Kaleb M

And seniors try to help them along the way :).