New article: The Best Developer I Knew, Barely Worked
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The Best Developer I Knew, Barely Worked
August 19, 2025
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Hello there! π
We've all met that developer who seems to glide through their workday while everyone else is grinding through bug fixes and feature requests. They have YT fired up more often than their IDE, yet, their commits are on point.
They're checking out at 5 PM sharp, never seem stressed, and somehow their code just works. It's easy to assume they're slacking off or getting lucky, but here's the thing: they might actually be the most effective person on the team.
The best developers aren't the ones burning the midnight oil or writing the most lines of code. They're the ones who have accumulated years of experience and that can calculate solutions in seconds instead of hours.
It's a reminder that in our industry, we often confuse busy work with productive work. The developer who "barely works" might just be working at a level the rest of us haven't reached yet, where experience, intuition, and strategic thinking do the heavy lifting instead of brute force and caffeine.
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