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Comment by mempko

3 years ago

Don't be ashamed to call yourself a programmer. Alex Stepanov, who created hundreds of billions in value by creating the C++ stl calls himself a programmer.

I call myself a programmer, because it's one word rather than a paragraph, and it's the bulk of what I do.

  • Me too, specially in social settings. It nicely stops the conversation about work.

    • Trying to decide if you're being ironic.

      I find that even saying "I'm a programmer" in social settings triggers my counterparty to frantically start scanning the room for anybody else to talk to.

      In social situations when that comes up I usually say something like "I work for <employer>" and then immediately try to change the subject.

      1 reply →

I got the exact opposite advice decades ago if you want to remain technical. If you start becoming the company expert on their business processes as a programmer, time to move to a new company.

That served me very well and I remained a programmer for my whole career.

  • I think this is very good advice for many programmers. I think a lot of programmers become stagnant in sone company because if the phenomena you describe.