Thread: What makes a competent software engineer? Let’s find out.

What makes a competent software engineer? Let’s find out. (medium.com)

L 1 pts 0 comments by antifuchs Apr 11, 2016 practices Programming (General)Productivity / Career / Business thread

What Makes A Senior Software Engineer (medium.com)

L 2 pts 0 comments by kurtis Feb 13, 2017 practicesprogramming Programming (General)Productivity / Career / Business thread

What Makes A Great Software Engineer? (faculty.washington.edu)

L 6 pts 0 comments by av Dec 11, 2017 culturepdfprogramming Programming (General)Culture / Philosophy / History / Reading thread

My (somewhat) complete salary history as a software engineer (humanwhocodes.com)

L 56 pts 46 comments by friendlysock Oct 31, 2018 practices Programming (General)Productivity / Career / Business Culture / Philosophy / History / Reading thread

What makes a great software engineer great (wyeworks.com)

L 1 pts 0 comments by smartinez87 Jan 22, 2019 programming Programming (General) thread

No Silver Bullet — Essence and Accident in Software Engineering (1986) (worrydream.com)

L 5 pts 0 comments by calvin Feb 26, 2019 pdfpractices Programming (General)Productivity / Career / Business thread

An open letter to software engineers criticizing Neil Ferguson's epidemics simulation code (blog.khinsen.net)

L 43 pts 57 comments by wesleyac May 18, 2020 practicesscience Programming (General)Science / Math / Physics Productivity / Career / Business thread

AI Writing Code Makes Software Engineers More Valuable (davnicwil.com)

L 1 pts 0 comments by mooreds Jul 21, 2020 programming AI / Machine Learning Programming (General) thread

Bullet journalling for software engineers (ksylor.github.io)

L 33 pts 16 comments by vfoley Jun 1, 2021 practices Programming (General)Productivity / Career / Business thread

No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accident in Software Engineering [pdf] (cs.unc.edu)

HN 1 pts 0 comments by rkwz Aug 18, 2024 Programming (General) thread

Ask HN: What makes the game Doom that special in a Software Engineering context?

HN 2 pts 2 comments by andygrunwald Sep 16, 2024 Programming (General) thread

E.g. What groundbreaking logic it had implemented?<p>E.g. Why it is ported to various platforms and always used as a test game to run in the next (fascinating) engine?

What Makes a Senior Software Engineer (md.jtmn.dev)

HN 4 pts 0 comments by OccamsMirror Jan 31, 2025 Programming (General) thread

What Makes a Great Software Engineer (Dissertation) (2016) [pdf] (faculty.washington.edu)

HN 96 pts 49 comments by azhenley Feb 19, 2025 Programming (General) thread

The Automation Takeover: Are Software Engineers Becoming Obsolete? (forbes.com)

HN 1 pts 1 comments by cumo May 2, 2025 Programming (General) thread

The magic of software; or, what makes a good engineer also makes a good engineering organization (moxie.org)

L 29 pts 19 comments by brokebit May 7, 2025 compscihistoricalpractices Programming (General)Programming Languages / CS Theory Productivity / Career / Business Culture / Philosophy / History / Reading thread

Ask HN: What's the best email newsletter tool for a software engineer

HN 2 pts 3 comments by stuart_real May 8, 2025 Programming (General) thread

I have a small list (<1000) of email subscribers who have signed up and opted in to be notified when new blog posts are published on my website.<p>What's the best tool to set up such an email-based newsletter? Kit? Mailchimp? Something else?<p>I am a software engineer, so I do want maximal c...

What makes a good software engineer? (sanitarium.se)

HN 1 pts 0 comments by mooreds Aug 21, 2025 Programming (General) thread

CommBank: AI Software Engineering's Shift from Autocomplete to Autonomous Agents (medium.com)

HN 4 pts 2 comments by schwentkerr Aug 23, 2025 AI / Machine Learning Programming (General) thread

No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering (1986) [pdf] (cs.unc.edu)

HN 117 pts 31 comments by benterix Sep 7, 2025 Programming (General) thread

Free software engineer cover letter and resume tips generator (trylockedin.app)

HN 2 pts 0 comments by irfahm_ Oct 12, 2025 Programming (General) thread

Tesla's Former AI Director Karpathy Sends 'Open Letter' to Software Engineers (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

HN 2 pts 1 comments by hackernj Dec 27, 2025 AI / Machine Learning Programming (General) thread

A Letter of Feedback to Anyone Who Makes Software I Use (blog.jim-nielsen.com)

HN 2 pts 0 comments by headalgorithm Jan 6, 2026 thread

Software engineering makes up ~50% of agentic tool calls on Anthropic API (twitter.com)

HN 2 pts 0 comments by taubek Feb 20, 2026 AI / Machine Learning Programming (General) thread

No Silver Bullet–Essence and accident in software engineering (1986) [pdf] (worrydream.com)

HN 2 pts 0 comments by vinhnx Mar 4, 2026 Programming (General) thread

John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering (blogs.uw.edu)

L 5 pts 0 comments by pushcx Aug 23, 2012 compsci Programming (General)Programming Languages / CS Theory Science / Math / Physics Culture / Philosophy / History / Reading thread

The trajectory of a software engineer… and where it all goes wrong (michaelochurch.wordpress.com)

L 2 pts 2 comments by tobym Nov 1, 2012 philosophy Programming (General)Culture / Philosophy / History / Reading thread

Software Engineers should keep lab notebooks (blog.nelhage.com)

L 15 pts 3 comments by tobym Nov 28, 2012 philosophy Programming (General)Culture / Philosophy / History / Reading thread

Go at Google: Language Design in the Service of Software Engineering (talks.golang.org)

L 3 pts 0 comments by inactive-user Dec 5, 2012 go Programming (General)Design / UX / Visualization thread

The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data's unifying abstraction (engineering.linkedin.com)

L 8 pts 0 comments by journeysquid Dec 18, 2013 databasesprogramming Programming (General)Data / Databases / Infrastructure thread

The Not Rocket Science Rule Of Software Engineering (graydon.livejournal.com)

L 8 pts 0 comments by vjoel Feb 4, 2014 practices Programming (General)Science / Math / Physics Productivity / Career / Business thread