Programmer Competency Matrix (2016)

While there are some parts of this matrix I agree with, I have to say that it seems rather "old school". The matrix seems to assume that all programmers are systems-level programmers working with compiled languages. Dynamic languages are only listed in the "scripting" knowledge section. There are tons of huge projects written entirely in dynamic languages. Assuming that dynamic languages are only for writing small scripts is disingenuous. The next improvement I can suggest is to remove the implications…

To the folks at Starling: Do you even realize how obnoxious and full of yourselves you sound?! Let's see: suppose I'm a person who ranks highly on a lot of the lines in your matrix. You expect me to send you a resume (which you say you won't really consider), then to rank myself on a 10-page matrix of skills and abilities (but you won't care much what I have to say), then to write some rather non-trivial sample programs…

Why isn't there a row for "figuring out how large, poorly-documented legacy systems work"? That's what most of my daily development tasks consist of, anyway.

Usual misunderstanding, but needs to be pointed out: Automated testing Level 1: Has written automated unit tests and comes up with good unit test cases for the code that is being written Level 2: Has written code in TDD manner TDD is not for testing, TDD is for system design and an automatic work list. Using TDD does not mean the automated tests are better or worse - you are probably thinking of code coverage.