How strong are your programming skills?

Whether you're a programming novice or a top-notch developer, there's a place for you in open source.
636 readers like this.
3 cool machine learning projects using TensorFlow and the Raspberry Pi

Opensource.com

Everybody's a critic, but today, we're asking you to evaluate yourself. How sharp are your programming skills?

In the world of open source programming, you'll readily find people of all different skill levels. In fact, that's one of the best parts about it—beginners can gain valuable experience, while more seasoned developers have the opportunity to give back in the form of not only code, but mentorship as well. In a healthy project community, having contributors who span a spectrum of ability levels isn't a bug, it's a feature.

So today we're asking you: How would you rate yourself as a developer? Are you a rockstar (or a Willie Nelson)? Or are you just getting started on your path to greatness? Somewhere in between? Or not a coder at all?

Regardless of where you stand, let us know in our poll above, and then in the comments below, give us a little color about why you answered how you did. What makes a developer an expert? What was that moment when you knew you were no longer a beginner? And what life experiences helped you get to whatever point you are on your path today?

User profile image.
Jason was an Opensource.com staff member and Red Hatter from 2013 to 2022. This profile contains his work-related articles from that time. Other contributions can be found on his personal account.

8 Comments

I started out in computer operations on large-scale IBM mainframes in 1968.
That's coming up to 50 years next March. I studied IBM courses and became a systems engineer - but didn't program. I was expert with TSO command files and IBM JCL, creating job streams for production and development shops. I was also doing sysgens for IBM MVS and VM systems. In 1978 I got introduced to Dec Ultrix (BSD flavoured Unix) and relational databases. I became an Oracle / Unix / Linux DBA and have been doing this work to the present.

It would be interesting to also ask #of years you have been programming. As study after study had shown that the the more ignorant a person is in a subject, the over confident they are about their ability in that subject. Which of you think about it, is very logical as they don't know what they don't know.

That would be a good topic for a future poll, and perhaps we can find a study or two specific to development looking at the correlation (or lack thereof) between years of experience and perceived skill level.

In reply to by Burke (not verified)

I took courses in Java back in college but don't code as much now. I do need to get to know coding again as this was 5 years ago and I know things have changed in the programming world. Little did I know then that knowing how to read code would help me understand coding in general. Although I don't code near as much as I once did, I would still consider myself a beginner.

Total beginner in programming. Learning C as my first language!

Yep, I found AVR and OS tools more interesting than applications!

I started from C64 era by programming it with Basic, then Pascal and ASM.
Later I went to code large industrial systems using Ansi/Posix C, some VisualBasic etc (mostly C + Oracle ProC-SQL). Then switched (by demand) into Win32 API etc.
Later my coding has been switched mostly into PHP (LAMP stack) using Linux platforms and hybrid programming including Bash scripting and beyond. My Linux knowledge started from 0.96 Kernel (Slackware) and currently I also contribute on Fedoraproject as an Ambassador.
Some 25 years done.

As the computer languages and platforms change, it is difficult to maintain an expert level, even in one particular area. At one point, I had a strong background in embedded systems development using C++ (early 90s). The complexity of both embedded systems and C++ has increased to the point that it is a struggle to keep up with both.

My main programming experiences were from the 80s and 90s doing assembly (Motorola 6800), C, Fortran77, and a little Java. Mostly graphics, back end and system work, not too much UI. Since then more of hobbyist though I don't code much anymore. I've learned python in the last 5 years, really do like it. Forgotten a lot of what I used to know (assembly), but still recognize C code. I wouldn't say I'm a blazing expert in these things, but I know a lot of arcane stuff. My knowledge is all a bit dated by now.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.