I Am So Absolutely in the Top 20%
I like reading Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror. He writes about issues and ideas that are about the similar level as Mythical Man Month: programmer and team productivity, software processes, tools, industry trends, etc. You don’t have to be a down-in-the-trenches programmer to appreciate these types of discussions.
A recent article on Coding Horror struck a nerve with the readers. In The Two Types of Programmers, Jeff talks about the difference between the 80% and the 20% programmers in the field. The fact of the matter is, any profession or field will have its own kind of divide. Perhaps this is more so in the software world than other professions, because “writing for a software” is barely a profession depending on where you go. There is not a specific certified training program or certification tests that is used to judge the level of skill of a programmer.
Did the article struck a nerve for me? Perhaps yes, but not in the mouth-frothing rabid commentary that he got for his article (to which he came back with a crowd-calming response). I have been wondering about my passion for doing software for a living as of late. I think that we all have our ups and downs with life: in my case, I think my “bumming around” was really a chance for me to really ask myself what I like to do for fun. While putting together alfredpang.com is not exactly the same level of difficulty as actually writing software, there is a similar element of making public, my own personal work. In other words, expressing myself is fun for me.
More recently I realized (probably because of something else I read), that doing a startup is just another form of personal expression, except that the tools are business plans, venture capital and management skills. Perhaps that is why my fascination for all things startup; just can’t get enough of that startup Kool-Aid. (I’ll have to write about ycombinator one of these days.)
Lately, I feel like I am starting to get a bit more clear about what I am supposed to be doing. Or to be more precise: what I want to be doing. It is a good thing.
