The trope of the 10x Developer has been written about ad nauseum, but there’s another type you are more likely to meet in your career - the 0x Developer.
What makes a 0x Developer? These are the folks who:
Honestly 0x is a bit generous, because sometimes these devs eat up so much energy from the rest of the team they’re a negative addition, but I think 0x rolls off the tongue better than negative-x Developer1.
This isn’t about skill. Everyone starts somewhere. Mistakes from inexperience are fine, even encouraged, because humans usually need to burn their hand to learn a lesson, no matter how many times you say the stove is hot. But there’s a difference between not knowing yet, and not bothering to figure it out.
Don’t be a 0x Dev.
: How do I know I’m not a 0x Dev? I’m no Kent Dodds, but I occasionally slap enough of the right code & actions together to have numerous people tell me I’m a useful teammate. Or maybe I’m a giant hypocrite. ↩︎
I also did not trust the hype after my previous AI experiences, so after trying out Windsurf and being pretty impressed, I wanted to give a more measured review with context on what I actually experienced - rather than you having to trust some random person on the internet.
Finding a solution to parse unescaped double quotes in my JSON strings, with minimal tears.
Tired of hand calculating the total cost for your graduated pricing tier in Stripe? Me, too!
A reflection on my failure to build a viable product, so others can learn from my mistakes.
Lessons learned from a couple days spent debugging everything BUT the problem.