What's your dev super power?

As developers we argue a lot about the best way to learn or the best framework to build an application. I think all approaches are valid. I believe that there are different development styles. Our learning and career experience as well as our personal preference shapes our style and helps us excel at a certain aspect of development.

Some developers are great at breaking down complicated theory and explaining it in simple terms. Whereas others are good at optimizing code for web applications that serves millions of users. Some understand the nuances of a framework and can build the next best framework. We all have our dev super powers.

My super powers are that I can learn new programming languages and frameworks quickly. I can also take an existing application with no documentation and figure out what it's doing.

How did I develop these super powers?
I studied Computer Science in college. We built databases and compilers from scratch. When I started looking for work, I realized no one cared about that. They wanted me to build web applications. So, I started volunteering for a non-profit and worked on a friend's startup. The first web app I worked on was written in PHP and jQuery. So, I learned both by tweaking the app here and there and built in more complex features as I learned. I also learned some voicexml and built an automated voice system for car ride sharing for a startup (sort of like Uber Pool. We were too early. Smart phones weren't a thing back then 😆).

In my first full-time job, I built web apps for scientists and researchers. I took legacy web apps and re-built them using modern frameworks. I took complicated databases and spreadsheets, simplified them and rebuilt them in a different system. The people who worked on these apps didn't work there anymore. So, I rebuilt these applications with no documentation and with no one to ask questions. I once took a 30 page SQL trigger which had a lot of the business logic in it and turned into a few functions in Python.

At one point, I also worked for a startup. I had to work with applications which were written in different frameworks. They had also invented their own programming language (with no documentation) 🙄.

It wasn't easy but this is how I built my super powers over time. 

With my super powers, I can build apps quickly with any framework or language. I can look at an existing application that I'm not familiar with and fix a bug or add new features to it. I excel at working for startups that have tight deadlines and at government agencies with tight budgets.

So, tell me about your super power. What is it? How did you develop this super power?