I think building stuff is hugely underrated. When I look around most people are working on stuff that concerns being interfaces to complex systems (lawyers, doctors, customer service), communication (formal and informal jounalism, technical writing, making data comprehensible), or management (making projects happen).<p>There are, of course, much pleasure in these things, but what I enjoy most is building and releasing new "stuff" into the world. There is perhaps something primitive about building articfacts that give you pleasure, enhance your life, or make you more productive.
<i>"In many ways, I always kept my distance a bit, never caring much for advanced methodologies, studying design patterns, proving algorithms, or learning cutting-edge languages before they’re stable and practical. I’ve always written code for the sake of making the product I wanted, not for the code’s own sake."</i><p>Refreshing to read something like that here on HN, especially when you share this instrumental approach. If I remember correctly, DHH also said something along those lines somewhere.
Ah self awareness is a curse. I can certainly relate to Marco's and by reference Matt's struggle.<p>Early on in life there is the ever present exchange "Hi, I'm Chuck I <foo>" where <foo> is some tag, some referent, that hopefully is common with the person you are talking too and that sets up a series of linkages, defines behaviors and expectations, and can inform on conversations that may or may not be interesting. When I was in my mid twenties I realized I was saying by rote "I'm an engineer." And that would then grease the conversation along.<p>But after a while I had things I did at work, and things I did as a hobby, and things I was interested in, and had a few awkward sort of exchanges that went something like "Hi I'm Chuck, I'm an engineer" ... various technical discussions ... "what do you think of the hypothesis that petroleum is a biologic process?" ... pause ... "Uh, I thought you were an engineer."<p>Then once I realized the conversational rut I was in I started just cutting it off, "Hi, I'm Chuck."<p>Now that is really funny around introverts since you leave them with no place to go. And a lot of folks I socialize with are fundamentally introverts. So that isn't a good conversation starter. :-)<p>But once you realize its a conversation starter, not a definition of who you are, you can go back into discovery mode, like "Hi I'm Chuck, I'm curious about that gizmo you're carrying ..." etc.<p>And you realize, as Marco and Matt have you want to know "who" you are. I've decided I'm the equivalent of the 'curiosity' thing you pull out of GLADoS in Portal.
Yes! The tools are a means to an end. The goal isn't to impress other developers with advanced knowledge of design patterns. The goal is to impress users. If your products impress users (which Instapaper and Tumblr certainly have) I think that makes you a damn good programmer.
If you have barely touched code in 6 months, you are not a programmer. Moreover, if you haven't bothered to learn design patterns, you probably never were.