What kind of developer are you?

[NewsBot]

I have been reading the second*"Win32 to Cocoa" article that lead to the discussion*here on Channel 9. The author mentions three types of devs in there:

 

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Article wrote:

At one level, you have people who are basically

business analysts

; they're using Access or Excel or VB6 to write data analyzing/number crunching applications. These things are hugely important in the business world, totally unexciting to anyone else, and the people writing them aren't really "programmers." I mean, they are, in the sense that they're writing programs, but they're not especially interested in programming or anything like that. They don't really care about the quality of the libraries and tools they're using; they just want something simple enough that they can pick it up without too much difficulty. They'll never write the best code or the best programs in the world; they won't be elegant or well-structured or pretty to look at. But they'll work. Historically, as I said, these are the kind of people who Access is made for. Access is a great tool, quite unparalleled. Sure, it's a lousy database engine with a hideous programming language, but the power it gives these people is immense. So Access and VB6 and Excel macros are where it's at for these guys.

 

At the next level, you have the

journeyman developers

. Now these people aren't "business" people—they are proper programmers. But it's just a job, and they'll tend to stick with what they know rather than try to do something better. They might be a bit more discerning about their tools than the business types, but they're not going to go out of their way to pick up new skills and learn new things. They might use VB6 or Java or C# or whatever; it doesn't really matter to them, as they'll use whatever offers them the best employment opportunities at any given moment. Their code will probably look more or less the same no matter what. They're not going to learn the idioms of whatever specific language they're using, because there's no need, so it's just not for them.

 

[...]

 

At the final level, you have the

conscientious developers

. These are people who care about what they're doing. They might be writing business apps somewhere (although they probably hate it, unless they are on a team of like-minded individuals) but, probably more likely, they're writing programs in their own time. They want to learn about what's cool and new; they want to do the right thing on their platforms; they want to learn new techniques and better solutions to existing problems. They might be using unusual development platforms, or they might be using C++, but they'll be writing good code that's appropriate to their tools. They'll heed UI guidelines (and only break them when appropriate); they'll use new features that the platform has to offer; they'll push things to the limit. In a good way, of course.

 

I count myself more in the last category; but might be wrong. What kind of developer are you?

 

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