HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Some basic heuristics I use for determining the capability of other programmers and myself:

1.) Does the code have a good bus factor i.e If the maintainer dies tomorrow by being knocked down by a bus, can other people pick up where he/she left off? Further research into the Bus Factor can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ

2.) Is the code well documented? This is so obvious that it is painful to write this comment, but it is a very simple heuristic for determining capability. Documentation can include code comments.

3.) Is the code resilient to weird input? The code should perform well under heavy fuzzing and where possible, sanitize different input. It should be tested against this: https://github.com/minimaxir/big-list-of-naughty-strings

Most people are average, thats kind of the meaning of average. I consider myself an average programmer advancing on an average career path and had plenty of recruiters contact me with interesting opportunities recently. Sure its not Google or Facebook, but so what, I wouln't like to work for a mega coorporation like that anyway. If you doubt yourself because you consider yourself average, consider that the constant talk of excellence, highest skilled people and so forth is mostly HR PR bullshit. Sure, there are extremeley talented people out there, but they are pretty rare.

Interesting video, that touches the issue: "The myth of the genius programmer"[0].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ

Google I/O 2009 - The Myth of the Genius Programmer

One of the best talks about code reviews and similiar things

https://youtu.be/0SARbwvhupQ

⬐ psgbg

And a somewhat related video

Nickel City Ruby 2014- Learning From Failure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTqO_ylhkOI

"I hated discussing what OO pattern should be used" "they submit patches to major frameworks, writes things in assembly for fun" You don't have to do this kind of things to be a programmer. Of course discussing OO patterns with your team is a need but submitting patches to major frameworks is on your free time! If every programmer would do so we wouldn't have so many incomplete open software. Try not to be chased by the "The Myth of the Genius Programmer" and keep enjoying creating things.

A google talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ

Fitz actually jokes about METAFONT in the video at 11:29: http://youtu.be/0SARbwvhupQ?t=11m27s

So, just as a reference:

"Google I/O 2009 - The Myth of the Genius Programmer": http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ

There are quite a couple of possible views in IT, which makes it hard for us

Summary of the links shared here:

http://blip.tv/clojure/michael-fogus-the-macronomicon-597023...

http://blog.fogus.me/2011/11/15/the-macronomicon-slides/

http://boingboing.net/2011/12/28/linguistics-turing-complete...

http://businessofsoftware.org/2010/06/don-norman-at-business...

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/GoingNative-2012...

http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Expert-to-Expert-R...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Susskind

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

http://io9.com/watch-a-series-of-seven-brilliant-lectures-by...

http://libarynth.org/selfgol

http://mollyrocket.com/9438

https://github.com/PharkMillups/killer-talks

http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/java-jee/radical-simplicity/...

http://stufftohelpyouout.blogspot.com/2009/07/great-talk-on-...

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JXhJyTo5V8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEfedtQVOY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx3KuE7UjGA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGeN2IC7N0Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlkCdM_f3p4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgmA48fILq8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

http://vimeo.com/10260548

http://vimeo.com/36579366

http://vimeo.com/5047563

http://vimeo.com/7088524

http://vimeo.com/9270320

http://vpri.org/html/writings.php

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/1071-cascadiaruby2012-therap...

http://www.confreaks.com/videos/759-rubymidwest2011-keynote-...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xf88b5_jean-pierre-serre-wr...

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Are-We-There-Yet-Rich-Hic...

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/click-crash-course-modern...

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/miniKanren

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Thinking-Parallel-Program...

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Value-Identity-State-Rich...

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-T...

http://www.mvcconf.com/videos

http://www.slideshare.net/fogus/the-macronomicon-10171952

http://www.slideshare.net/sriprasanna/introduction-to-cluste...

http://www.tele-task.de/archive/lecture/overview/5819/

http://www.tele-task.de/archive/video/flash/14029/

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Principles.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LG-RtcSYUQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WXYw4J4QOU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agw-wlHGi0E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at7viw2KXak

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx3KuE7UjGA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cidchWg74Y4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjaGktVQdNg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et8xNAc2ic8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3mhkYbznBk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTJs-0EInW8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXEgk1Hdze0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7kEpw1tn50

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOZqRJzE8xg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neI_Pj558CY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG66hIhUdEU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nii1n8PYLrc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP9AIUT9nos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB-bdWKwXsU&playnext=...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCZMoY3q2uM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Own-89vxYF8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlzM3zcd-lk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx082gDwGcM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7nfN4bOOQI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt8jyPqsmxE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUf75_MlOnw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjPBkvYh-ss

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX3iRjKj7C0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAf9HK16F-A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDR433b0HJY

http://youtu.be/lQAV3bPOYHo

http://yuiblog.com/crockford/

⬐ ricardobeat

And here are them with titles + thumbnails:

http://bl.ocks.org/ricardobeat/raw/5343140/

⬐ waqas-

how awesome are you? thanks

⬐ Expez

Thank you so much for this!

⬐ X4

This is cool :) Btw. the first link was somehow (re)moved. The blip.tv link is now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JXhJyTo5V8

The Myth of the Genius Programmer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ

It's open source insofar as the code, when it is released, will be released under an open licence. However, it fails the 'unofficial' criterion of a project that is developed in the open. See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ

I recommend The Myth of The Genius Programmer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ

What you see on Github is people's polished code - you don't see what they are throwing away. They might be better, but you are probably looking at some of the code they are most proud of.

(Actually, for my github/bitbucket page this is no longer the case. After I watched this video, I started publishing as much of my code as possible, if it actually did what it was supposed to)

⬐ follower

Thanks for that link--the first 5-7 minutes nicely covers the "what if someone judges me by the quality of my code" fear that lots of us have.

I was pleased to see your parenthetical comment as well--one of the hobby horses I ride is to try to convince people to release more of their "hacky" code than they currently do.

Quoting a recent comment I made here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465516):

""" At the same time I posit that there is much useful/functional (albeit ugly) code sitting trapped on hard-drives around the world because the developer is concerned a future employer/client [or peer] might judge them for it if it were released.

While this sort of filtering by prospective employer/client may well happen, I think the average developer concerned about such things has a much higher standard for work than needed.

I've tried to adjust my thinking to "Well, it works for me, that means it might be useful to someone else, so I'll put it up there. If some future employer/client can't see that it's a quick hack and not representative of my daily work, well, that probably says more about them."

I'd rather find your 10-line hack to get that obscure API working and build on it, than nothing at all. """