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Discussion on: What is the best quality a developer can have?

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cubiclebuddha profile image
Cubicle Buddha • Edited

For me, the best quality is "humility" and a love of "not knowing."

As I mention in this article:

"it’s okay to not know the answer. You can’t learn unless you admit that you don’t know."

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ssimontis profile image
Scott Simontis

Another huge aspect of humility I personally struggle with is delegating. The world isn't going to end because I didn't write that module in some super fancy functional programming chained statement that lets me show off I know what a monad is.

I have been through a lot of abusive/dangerous/traumatic situations in life and it is hard for me to trust people, so sometimes I have to catch myself doubting my own teammates can get the job done and I have to recollect and possibly get out of the office for the rest of the day.

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cubiclebuddha profile image
Cubicle Buddha

I have to catch myself doubting my own teammates can get the job done

That definitely hits home for me. I often find myself judging other people's code most harshly when I'm feeling my own feelings of inferiority. Ain't it funny how that works?

Sometimes I find that if I tell myself "you are a good developer who doesn't need to be ashamed of his skill level" I will suddenly feel less judgemental to others. If I can heal "the inner child" then I'm not as concerned with what other people are doing. And it also reminds me that they're on their own journey too. They might end up in my "fancy functional programming chained statement" world eventually (I do love FP btw), or they might not. But either way, they are probably dealing with their own inferiority. So thank you for reminding me of that. :)

Btw, you also gave a great solution too:

I have to recollect and possibly get out of the office for the rest of the day.

Sometimes a little bit of distance is all you need. :)

Great thoughts @ssimontis .

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nssimeonov profile image
Templar++

I'm open to argue about "humility", although we may understand different things here. One has to have some self-confidence and even a bit of arrogance - being too humble isn't good for you. Being over-confident is bad too - no argue about that of course.

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cubiclebuddha profile image
Cubicle Buddha

Can't you be confident without being arrogant? I define humility as being confident while being willing to be wrong.

I also like this quote:

“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” ~ Rick Warren

And this one kind of touches on the empiricism aspects I was talking about in my article:

“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?” ~ Carl Sagan