Google I/O 2009 - The Myth of the Genius Programmer

Most people are average, thats kind of the meaning of average. I consider myself an average programmer advancing on an average career path and had plenty of recruiters contact me with interesting opportunities recently. Sure its not Google or Facebook, but so what, I wouln't like to work for a mega coorporation like that anyway. If you doubt yourself because you consider yourself average, consider that the constant talk of excellence, highest skilled people and so forth is mostly HR PR bullshit. Sure, there are extremeley talented people out there, but they are pretty rare. Interesting video, that touches the issue: "The myth of the genius programmer"[0]. [0]: [this video]

Some basic heuristics I use for determining the capability of other programmers and myself: 1.) Does the code have a good bus factor i.e If the maintainer dies tomorrow by being knocked down by a bus, can other people pick up where he/she left off? Further research into the Bus Factor can be found here: [this video] 2.) Is the code well documented? This is so obvious that it is painful to write this comment, but it is a very simple heuristic for determining capability. Documentation can include code comments. 3.) Is the code resilient to weird input? The code should perform well under heavy fuzzing and where possible, sanitize different input. It should be tested against this: [link]