Especially for Hacker School students, but really for anyone: If you’re looking for a way to discretely measure your progress through Hacker School, check out the following resources:
- Programmer Competency Matrix
- This one especially is a good way to measure yourself.
- Programmer Competency Matrix rebooted, which is the same thing but extended.
- Signs you’re a good programmer
- The Eight Levels of Programmer
- BLS – Occupational Descriptions
- A much less humorous listing of programmer levels.
- Programming Achievements: How to Level Up as a Developer
- Hooray for gamification!
If you don’t really know what you want to work on, choose whatever is your lowest level in the Programmer Competency Matrix, or an example in the eight levels of programmer that you don’t understand, and ask someone more knowledgeable about it!
From Brooklyn,
–Erty
Hey Erty, this is Julie from HS! That programmer competency matrix is really useful, thanks for posting it!
Hi Erty – I really enjoyed your links, especially the “Signs you’re a good programmer”!
Here’s another one in the same vein that I quite like. (It makes me feel like I have a lot to learn!) It has a bit of an academic focus, and suggested places to start studying.
http://matt.might.net/articles/what-cs-majors-should-know/
I always love lists like these. Invariably, they are written by a self proclaimed top programmer. And the top level is always the level said top programmer has personally achieved. Take the first link as an example.
You’re only an expert if you can do binary code and assembly? Great. Good for you. You know assembly. Not everyone needs to. Assembly is the furthest thing from relevant that I can imagine at my job.
But then look down at builds. Oh you think you’re an expert because you can write a build script? That’s cute. Let me know when you’ve set up a Jenkins cluster.
Plenty of example where the top level in that list would be considered a novice by others and the top level in other categories are entirely irrelevant or arbitrary. (Experience)