The Difference Between a Professional and an Amateur Programmer

Mike Cohn:

The professional programmer brings his or her full brain, experience and creativity to the job. When asked to develop a feature, the professional thinks about it: Are there gaps in what was asked for? Are there alternative and better solutions? Will it lead to later problems? And then the professional has conversations with the product owner based on the answers to these questions to determine exactly what the feature will look like when implemented.

In contrast, the amateur says, “OK, I’ll give you exactly what you asked for.” That’s easier. The amateur programmer doesn’t have to think about the work beyond the specification. Just code what was asked for.

Yes!

The Difference Between a Professional and an Amateur Programmer →

On a related note, this brilliant image:

Published by Bramus!

Bramus is a frontend web developer from Belgium, working as a Chrome Developer Relations Engineer at Google. From the moment he discovered view-source at the age of 14 (way back in 1997), he fell in love with the web and has been tinkering with it ever since (more …)

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