I try to spend a little time every day brushing up on my developer skills. Some days I have more success than others. I might attempt to brush up on my skills by reading a tech book (currently working through "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" by Michael C. Feathers, I'm loving that book!), practicing some new language features (I'm still wrapping my head around lambda expressions and LINQ) or just browsing tech blogs and listening to tech podcasts. I do this partly because our industry changes so rapidly that you HAVE to do this just to stay relevant but mostly because I just like learning new things. I love what I do.
Well, yesterday I stumbled across an older article by Scott Hanselman. It's not the first time I've seen it. I've read through it before. It's called What Great .NET Developers Ought To Know (More .NET Interview Questions). Last time I read through this article, I took it as a challenge. In fact my small little team started meeting to work through these questions so we could try and answer them. The ones we didn't have answers for we were researching. We were able to meet about twice before the pressures of deadlines and heavy workloads caused us to abandon the goal and the meetings just kind of died out. We had barely started on the list.
It's been over a year now since I last read that article and started on that goals (maybe almost 2 years?). I'm a better developer than I was two years ago. I know this. However in just reading that first section of questions, the ones in the "Everyone who writes code" section, I realized I couldn't answer ANY of them off the top of my head.
Sure there were a few I could probably bluff my way through. I might "generally" know an answer, but in an interview type situation if anyone leaned on me to speak a little deeper about my answer it would be pretty apparent that I really didn't know what I was talking about. I don't REALLY know the answers. And that's just for some of the questions. For other questions in that little "Everyone who writes code" section I wouldn't even know where to start answering the question and this is with me dimly remembering that we had almost covered all these beginner questions in those two meetings years ago with my team.
What does that say about me? The post says "Great" .NET developers. Kind of a blow to my ego, but I can deal with that, I'm not great. But then these questions are also suggested as interview questions. So am I not worth hiring as a developer? I mean I couldn't even get through the first section of questions.
I have a Math/Computer Science degree. I went to a fairly well respected private school and it's a pretty tough one academically (we even had Saturday classes!). So I think I'm at least semi-intelligent (maybe? pretty please, at least give me that!). I've also been programming in the work force for just about 10 years now (so I have some experience doing what I do). And it's not something I do just for a day job, I code at home as well for hours every night (so I'm not just a clock puncher). It's something I love to do. I even managed to snag a Microsoft MVP award for a few years (although to be honest that has less to do with you as a developer and more to do with you as a community member!). And like I mentioned, I try to learn something new everyday, I like to think I'm staying current with the industry (so I'm constantly actively trying to better myself!).
Yet I can't answer the questions in the "Everyone who writes code" section of a list of questions for things every Great .NET Developer ought to know and might be interviewed with at their next job....
So what does this mean? Are those questions really representative of things every .NET developer should know off the top of their head or is Hanselman just so awesome he no longer can identify with "GREAT" .NET developers and has instead made a list of questions for What FANTASTICALLY INCREDIBLE GOD LIKE .NET DEVELOPERS Ought to know?
To be honest I'm not sure. I personally think I just learned I'm a sub-par developer. Guess I have some more work to do...