Developer - Decoded with five senses

In today's world everyone wants to become an expert and claims to be an expert. I have tried to capture my thoughts on this by relating it to our five senses to develop a deep understanding on this topic.

I see four stages/levels of developers and have given below with simple real-life example to relate them easily. Each level can be related to one of our sense.

Immature Level (Hear)

1. Mode: Hear. Some people start working based on what they hear from others or social media. This knowledge is a preliminary knowledge using which he/she can't work and deliver a quality output. We can classify the level as Immature as they won't have clear understanding on things and their decisions most of the time won't be accurate and they highly depends on other professional people..
2. Real-life example: They know that people can ride bicycle. But, they don't know how to. They would not have tried by themselves.
3. Developer: Developers with just hear/read mode would struggle to make things on their own. They find difficult to code & deliver. They highly dependent on others.

Amateur Level (See)

Mode: Read. People at this level would have spent sometime to learn things and have read things to know about it. They may know how exactly things work and may have theoretical knowledge.They can interpret facts & figures

Real-life example: They closely looking at a person riding bicycle and knows how a person can ride bicycle. But, they would not have tried riding bicycle on their own.

Developer: They know how to program its syntax. They know how to work with system to product output. But, they struggle to meet the requirement with the code and need assistance of other professions occasionally

Professional Level (Touch)

1. Mode: Hands-on Learning. They Practice and experiment by themselves to learn things and have good understanding on things. They have confidence in their area.
2. Real-life example: Learnt to ride bicycle comfortably on his/her own.
3. Developer: They know how to code and can comfortably & independently work to deliver. They understand the requirement and delivers quality code to meet the requirement.

Expert Level (Smell)

1. Mode: Deep Learning. They practice under extreme condition. They can smell issues and can foresee the unobvious challenges. They consider potential future requirement and try to address them.
2. Real-life example: Rides bicycle in a bicycle marathon, uphill ride, can exceed 40 km/h consistently, can ride a bicycle with more than 2 people, etc.
3. Developer: They know how to code which not only meets the requirement and also make it scalable, extendable, reusable, handles exception, highly modularized, etc. The code is highly performing and well documented.

Everyone (Talk)

Mode: Talk. Every person talks great about themselves and it is very difficult for others to assess whether he/she is an expert. I hope with the other senses mentioned above would help you assess the expert level of individuals. We need to obviously go beyond looking at other's talk:)

Real-life example: If a person says that he/she is an expert in riding bicycle, give them a bicycle and you know how to assess it.

Developer: You can give a real life programming challenge to see how the developer approaches the problem. Learn to understand the sense he/she uses. You might be able to assess their actual level.

Summary

The objective of this article is not only to assess others. But also to assess our own and see how we can move to next level and make use of our other senses to make meaningful professional life and success.

I hope this article makes sense:)