You Don’t Have to Be a Genius to Code
Confessions of a successful second-tier programmer
“I’m not a great programmer; I’m just a good programmer with great habits.”
― Kent Beck
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. From the first time I plugged in my x86 IBM in 6th grade and keyed in a BASIC command, I was just sure I was destined to be an elite programmer someday. Fast forward to a few months later and I’d managed to program it to play the Jurassic Park theme song via MIDI and you absolutely could not tell me I wasn’t the next Steve Wozniak. Alas, sadly it wasn’t to be.
So what went wrong? Girls, music, art, school, travel… I loved coding, but as it turned out I loved a lot of other things too and I couldn’t dedicate the time it takes to be one of those truly top-tier super-programmers. For a long time, this really bothered me and undoubtedly fueled a virulent case of the dreaded “Imposter Syndrome”. This was compounded by the fact that my oldest brother is in fact, one of those guys. Seriously, he writes Augmented Reality code I have to wear sunglasses to look at to keep my eyes from bleeding.
So how am I, despite my admitted lack of brilliance, successful?
