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The best programmers I know

(endler.dev)
628 points kiyanwang | 1 comments | 09 Apr 25 06:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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blackbrokkoli ◴[09 Apr 25 08:19 UTC] No.43629992[source]▶
Note that this says "best programmers" not "people best at having business impact by making software".

I wonder about this often: If you want to have impact/solve problems/make money, not just optimizing killing your JIRA tickets, should you invest a given hour into understanding the lowest code layer of framework X, or talk to people in the business domain? Read documentation or a book on accessibility in embedded systems? Pick up yet another tech stack or simply get faster at the one you have that is "good enough"?

Not easy to answer, but worth keeping in mind that there is more to programming than just programming.

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1. patrickjd ◴[09 Apr 25 08:51 UTC] No.43630175[source]▶
> worth keeping in mind that there is more to programming than just programming.

As a side note, this is what I keep pointing out when people talk about code generated by LLMs. As an activity, this is just one thing that programmers do.

I think the answer to your question (a good question indeed) is "both", or rather to balance development of both capabilities. The decision of how to spend time won't be a single decision but is repeated often through the years. The Staff+ engineers with whom I work _mostly_ excel at both aspects, with a small handful being technical specialists. I haven't encountered any who have deep domain knowledge but limited technical depth.

(edit: formatting)