No program was ever made better by one developer scoffing at another. Computer science does not move forward with condescending attitudes. Success in software isn’t the result of looking down your nose or wagging your finger at others.
And yet, if you observe from the outside, you’d think that we all live in a wacky world of wonks, one where it’s not the facts, but how violently you repeat your talking points that matters the most. The Javascript guys do this in 2011, the Ruby guys did it in 2005, the .NET people before that in 2002, and on down the line.
Civility isn’t always what gets you noticed, but if you don’t have an outsized ability to focus on technical problems for tens of hours, it sure helps. You’re not the most brilliant developer on the planet, but you like to make people laugh, and you like to hang around those who are smarter than me. That’s not the recipe for a solid career in programming, but it’s a good bridge to get you from the journeyman side of the river over to the side where people think you might know what you’re doing.
Once you reach the other side, its a matter of putting in the hours, doing the practice, learning things, and always challenging yourself. Work with the smartest people you can, push yourself to make something better every day. Grind on that enough and you’ll get to the point where you really know what you’re doing.
Then, you close the loop. You were civil, you didn’t piss too many people off. They are eager to hear about the awesome and exciting things you did. So tell them. Even if you don’t think it’s all that awesome, some will know that you’ve got the awesome in you and that it will come out eventually. Some of them aren’t your mom!
This is what some call a successful career. It’s not so bad, but it’s not exactly the extravagant lifestyle you imagined when you were twenty. On the plus side, you do roughly the same things on a daily basis as you did back then, which isn’t so bad. Being an adult turns out to be pretty alright.
At some point, you write this advice to yourself on your weblog, except in the second person. Hopefully someone younger, perhaps on the precipice of idolizing a brilliant asshole, will read it and take a more civil path. Maybe you’ll get to work with them someday. Let’s hope it’s not too awkward.
