Being a great programmer definitely isn’t easy, it’s a practice that takes more than just substantial credentials for someone to excel at. Some people may think the goal is to simply get a few years of professional experience and magically become great.

However, simply doing the job isn’t nearly enough of what can be expected from a great modern programmer. Let’s look at a few characteristics that pose as dead giveaways for great programmers:

 

1. Experience Matters

Experience is the best teacher, so it’s safe to say that a programmer with more experience will be better than one that hasn’t been around the block. In this case, judging a programmer’s qualification based on their experience means judging them on their ability to be insightful and innovative in their work practice.

For example, an experienced programmer that’s well-versed in older languages can put their experience to good use when faced with a problem and tackle it using different methodologies and perspectives, while a programmer that’s inexperienced and only effective with less frameworks and languages will most likely resort to repetitively trying the few methods they know, getting the same results over and over again.

While it may not exactly be the “fairest” way to determine a person’s worth, experience is and always will be the most valued trait a coder can have.

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