mandag den 31. august 2009

KHAN's ladder to programming excellence!

In Maxwell Gladwells book 'Outliers' he mentions that in order to excel in anything you have to put atleast 10000 hours in to it, which is the equivalent of 6 hours each day in 5 years. 356 * 5 * 6 = 10680, well almost.

Here I present the ladder of programming excellenceu as perceived by me :)
Legend: HoP = Hours of Programming

KHAN's ladder to programming excellence!

I reckoned I hit the programming experience mark of 5000 hours 5 years ago.

Programming in Basic and DOS before my education = 1000 HoP

beginning programmer - 1000 HoP

Programming in high school Assembler, electronics, VB, Java, ASP, HTML: 1000 HoP

greenhorne programmer - 2000 HoP

Higher education as datamatician(mostly Java) 2 1/4 years, with an average of 140 hours a month: 4000 HoP

- at this point I broke the 5000 HoP

jorneyman programmer - 4000 HoP

After the bulk of work with non-contractor jobs 3 years, with an average of 180 hours a month: 6500 HoP
This involved mostly Java with J2EE, but I began on more complex tasks like configuring WebSphere servers, designing parts of enterprise wide technical solutions. Here I picked up many new complex skills, Eclipse RCP, Version control, functional programming, unit testing, server administration etc.
- here i accelarated because I had to break into many new concepts and frameworks, working after hours and reading a lot while experimenting.

veteran programmer - 8000 HoP

At this point I started my own company and began working as a freelancer. I had no products, no particular approach or plan, only my skill as a programmer. Though I discovered I also needed economical and business skills.
In this work I now have 2 years of experience, my pace has slowed down and I would now estimate to having 170 hours per month of IT experience: 4000 HoP, making a total of 16500 HoP.

expert programmer - 16000 HoP

master for me is 5 years away

master programmer - 32000 HoP

I might achieve programming guru before retirement

programming guru - 64000 HoP

//TODO insert lots of effort

deity programmer -
128000 HoP

I think of this scale as a logarithmic one. Each step requires the double amount of effort and I find this to be quite true. At a time while being greenhorne I experienced discovering new things more often, towards becoming a guru I can only guess to what I learn.