I stumbled across an old blog post of mine, What’s your Programmer Competency?, where I outlined my self-analysis results using Sijin Joseph‘s Programmer Competency Matrix. I figured it was worth revisiting this and see how much things have changed in the eight years since that original blog post.
The Programmer Competency Matrix is measured on a scale from 0 to 3, with 3 being highest.
- Computer Science: 1.3. Back in 2008, I was a 1. The reasons for the low number today is the same as eight years ago: my computer skills were not learned in the classroom, but in the real world. I’m not a computer scientist (as per the academic definition of computer science). But that’s not a bad thing, because most of the business world doesn’t need computer scientists!
- Software Engineering: 2.7. Now we’re cooking. The only reason this isn’t a 3 is because I don’t have much experience in automated functional testing and UI testing. This is one area where I’ve continually developed my skills over the years, and the past 8 years have been no exception to that.
- Programming: 2.9. This is a huge category so I won’t give myself a 3.0, but I’ve got most things in this category nailed. Reusable code? Check. Published frameworks? Check. Ridiculously well-organized code? Absolutely!
- Experience: 2.3. I’ve got a lot of experience in the technologies that I work with, and I have light experience in a lot of other technologies. Not having experience in things like Erlang and Prolog drags down my score here, but I’m not selling myself as an Erlang or Prolog expert, so I’m happy with my score.
- Knowledge: 2.4. If my career track was 100% development (and not more of a development/management split) this score would have been higher, but I’ve long ago accepted that part of my value is not just my programming knowledge, but my ability to interact with and communicate with people, not just machines — which is why I’m not spending my entire days sitting behind a computer writing code.
Not bad for a guy who started off as an infrastructure engineer, became a programmer out of necessity and curiosity, and ultimately made a career out of it all. Who would have thought this would happen when I was 12 years old hacking an Atari 800?