Ask HN: How to find out if I'm a good enough programmer?
Here's the thing. I've just been accepted at a highly regarded startup accelerator, which is great, I'm very excited and have tons of ideas to try out. BUT, I have never worked as a developer before, I programmed mostly as a hobby, I can Emacs, Arch, finished CS50, and went trough a full-stack boot-camp (learned Rails) earlier this year and that's basically my whole development experience.
Could this possibly be enough to not completely ruin my chances of success? Any tips on how to catch up as fast as possible?
Thanks in advance!
4 comments
If they accepted you then you're probably good enough.
Just do your best and keep learning as you've done so far. Cheers.
Just do your best and keep learning as you've done so far. Cheers.
You’ll never know unless you try. Stay focused on accomplishing business objectives rather than technical details or purity. Design pieces of the system to be replaced. If you’re building a business, the technology is a means to an end. Good luck!
I heard that you can grind leetcode to compare yourself to other programmers. My understanding is that it's for self contained puzzles like in interviews or contests, so it's obviously not representative of everything that makes a programmer a valuable employee, but it can be some kind of data point.
You'll probably learn more about programming while trying to create a startup than most CS undergrads do in 4 years. Don't skimp on theory though!