I'm a programmer and I'm stupid
I've been writing code for money for 20 years. I've tried other roles — product management, analytics, testing — but they didn't stick. And over the years, I've learned that I'm pretty dumb. Unfortunately. I haven't been diagnosed with any specific medical condition, but my mental capacity is very limited. I find even easier Leetcode problems challenging. Reading about a basic consensus algorithm makes my head explode. I can't really follow complex dependencies in a code base. I can't learn a fancy language like Rust (I tried, but honestly, it's too much). I hate microservices and modern frontends because there are so many moving parts, I can't keep track of them all. So what do I do about it? I use the simplest mainstream language available (Go) and very basic Python. I write simple (though sometimes verbose) code that is easy to understand and maintain. I avoid deep abstractions and always choose composition over inheritance or mixins. I only use generics when absolutely necessary. I
I've been writing code for money for 20 years. I've tried other roles — product management, analytics, testing — but they didn't stick. And over the years, I've learned that I'm pretty dumb. Unfortunately. I haven't been diagnosed with any specific medical condition, but my mental capacity is very limited. I find even easier Leetcode problems challenging. Reading about a basic consensus algorithm makes my head explode. I can't really follow complex dependencies in a code base. I can't learn a fancy language like Rust (I tried, but honestly, it's too much). I hate microservices and modern front
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