This tracks with my assessment of the two likely personalities of software engineers, either narcissistic or anxious with imposter syndrome.
Not at the same time, but in alternation, sure. It's all reactions to underlying shame and inadequacy beliefs/feelings which are there all the time I expect.
I disagree: as a Bachus of Programming I have successfully managed to at the same time both be a God of Programming AND having no clue what's going on.
(The real joke behind the joke is that today I'm doing Shader programming so that's quite close to reality and I could definitelly do with large amounts of wine or at least beer).
Here too the Schrödinger's equations apply: a programmer's state during coding is a superposition of both of these states until actually trying to run the code, at which point it collapses into one of the two states.
I'm pretty firmly in the second category only. I have had the first a few times, but when whatever thing you were so stoked about inevitably fries or fails a few weeks in, you quickly learn to stop doing #1 altogether.
That’s not true, there is a third state:
“I don’t care anymore, I’ll drive Uber if it comes to that”.
The trick there is that you'll be developing forever unless you get your hands dirty, because it like 80% works, and you need 99% to put it in any kind of prod.
- Start working in morning - Photo 2
- Take a break and come back - Photo 1
- flow state
- Come back next day - Photo 2
- The saga continues... (Wu tang, Wu tang)
Programmers have it so easy nowadays.
You should try programming in BASIC on the Atari.
Isn't that first artwork from the Atari BASIC book cover? I suffered enough with BASIC on my TI-99 and IBM XT, I can't imagine how rough the Atari version was.
Basic on commodore or turbo pascal on the icon, my first programming languages. Just started learning C++, shoulda started this 30 years ago
Turbo Pascal was great and a big step up over what you could do with BASIC. Good luck with C++.
There's a third state: "Where's the documentation on how to do <commonly done thing>, so I don't have to steal it from a GPL code?"
I would say there are two types of devs.
The HACKER MAN knowing everything, always have the only solution and being boss in their realm
The DAUBTER thinking they know too less, always searching for the best solution for the problem and trying to get as many information to solve the problem as possible
Even having the imposter syndrome as a big problem for mental health. I genuinely have the opinion it makes the better devs.