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Discussion on: 7 Signs That You're a Good Developer

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Noah Ginsburg

If you're able to to everything by yourself, you're likely not able to do anything well.

There are different kinds of developers for a reason. Web, OS, distributed, system tooling etc. And even those I listed have subcategories. Moreover there are appropriate languages to use for the different categories. So let's say you're a good Linux kernel developer. That means you're really really good with C. You're likely not gonna be an ideal choice for web development though. Flip side, you could be a savant with JavaScript, but Linus would likely rip you a new one for whatever patch you submitted to Linux.

For example I'm mainly a python developer, I can quarter ass my way through SQL, but it won't be efficient, likely it'll be a terrible query but that's because I've not dedicated the time I have to SQL that I have to python. If you ask me to write JavaScript you'll regret it, but if I'm developing within my toolbox as it were, it'll be pretty good.

Different people have different skill sets and being a good developer requires that you understand how you're good.

So, no. A good developer is likely not going to be able to do everything themselves, a good developer should be able to understand implications across the stack but then go submit a ticket when there's a bug outside their space and have the good developer for the given category handle the issue on their end.