Hamming, in his book The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, also encourages this.
But the last edition was in 1994 and he was writing from the position of having worked at Bell Labs for most of his career. We don’t really have that these days.
It’s great if you can find a way to be a non-fungible developer. I think part of the strategy is taking the spotlight and managing perceptions of your work. You don’t get to choose what you work on most of the time but you can make sure that it’s visible and useful.
As the author suggests, and I think I aspire to myself, is building good tools and libraries that people appreciate and depend on.
Hamming, in his book The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, also encourages this.
But the last edition was in 1994 and he was writing from the position of having worked at Bell Labs for most of his career. We don’t really have that these days.
It’s great if you can find a way to be a non-fungible developer. I think part of the strategy is taking the spotlight and managing perceptions of your work. You don’t get to choose what you work on most of the time but you can make sure that it’s visible and useful.
As the author suggests, and I think I aspire to myself, is building good tools and libraries that people appreciate and depend on.