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in my areas of expertise.
Besides, I don't have a problem with my hubris.
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I would consider myself highly skilled. I have nearly twenty years profesional development experience and have worked with some great people over the years who have helped me immensely in my attitude and professionalism. I also happily pass on my knowledge to the more junior members of the team.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
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Quote: I also happily pass on my knowledge to the more junior members of the team
Thank you, I enjoy that myself. Although I wish they would stop making me say WTF. 
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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John R. Shaw wrote: Although I wish they would stop making me say WTF.
I still get plenty of those 
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
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I'd put myself above average in some ways, average in others and truly goddamn lousy in others.
For me the curve starts high at the back-end and tapers off rapidly towards the front-end. Others will have an almost exact reverse of that curve. There will be others still with more of a humped profile with the high-points somewhere in the middle.
Many of us are masters of one trade who are forced to be Jacks of all.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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It's very context sensitive. I'm probably one of the most extreme examples of that ever.
I've been a hard core C++ developer for 30 years. But, if I went to an interview (or online one) and they asked me to write a simple C++ program for them, I'd fail completely. Of course their immediate response to that would be, this guy is a complete idiot and liar who obviously hasn't been doing C++ for any time at all.
But, the reason I would fail is because I don't use the standard C++/STL libraries, and the reason I don't is that I've written my own complete system from roots to leaves, including a full set of standard libraries (and even those are just a small part of my system overall.) And they are considerably better than the standard ones, IMO, being a horse designed by one person instead of a committee and not remotely as subject to the ravages of time and evolutionary baggage.
I think most folks would agree that creating a complete set of standard libraries requires vastly more skill than learning to use one someone else wrote. But it wouldn't do me much good in a standard interview scenario. They would probably just call security to throw me to the curb, and if they rated me they'd probably give me a 1. But I think that, in terms of ability to code incredibly complex systems in C++ and in breadth of experience, I think I'm a pretty solid 10.
Explorans limites defectum
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I here that. I have failed more than one of those test, even though I used to spend my time answering C++ standards questions. I have several template libraries that I have written in order to accomplish many of my personal goals and because it is the best way to learn the dusty corners of C++, and its limitations.
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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I thought we had an average above average here!  Who are all those average developers?!
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David Dunning and Justin Kruger found that people with exceptional skills tend to consider themselves on par with other people, while people with lower skills tended to rate themselves better than they were.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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So.. there should less self proclaimed average people than self proclaimed above average people, right?!  
And.. oh it's working! 
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Some of the above average will claim to be average.
Some of the average will claim to be above average.
Some of the below average will claim to be average.
It would be a wash, accept that there are more average than above average. Therefore, the number of above average is probably inflated a bit.
Just my interpretation - I could be wrong. 
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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Because every time I thought I was, I was humbled, sometimes even by myself.
Given how many major coding epiphanies I've had - i mean paradigm shifts - I expect them about once a year now.
And every time, I level up. So, I'm not very skilled yet. Next year I will be better. And next year, better still.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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codewitch honey crisis wrote: Next year I will be better. And next year, better still.
There is a similar quote I like:
You don't need to be better than the others, the real challenge is to be better than you were the day before.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Odds are you will always feel this way. There's always something new to learn
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That's what I figure. I'm fine with it. In fact, I think it's better than the alternative. Can you imagine living when you already know everything? How boring!
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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The WORST developers I've ever worked with were the ones who learned one thing and felt they'd arrived and knew everything. That one thing was VB6
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LOL
VB6 could do a shocking amount if you were willing to get clever with it but by then it was unreadable.
And the opaque forms layout system was so dark ages compared to .NET's codebehind technique.
VB6 was grand - as BASIC goes. But that's like being the smartest of the dumb kids.
But yeah, I hear you. I've met those developers.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I am sure there are people who wrote good code in VB6. He was not one of them
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LOL that's fair.
The most impressive thing I've ever seen written in VB6 was something to translate XPATH queries into SQL OUTER JOINS based on an XML schema ala SQLXML but it worked pre SQL2000 and on oracle DBs and such.
Pretty cool coding, in any language.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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That is pretty cool. But I would guess you used COM components, meaning you used VB6 to tell C++ code what to do? :P
I had the misfortune of working for a company that bought a website in ASP, and back end tools in VB6. I had to first convince my non technical boss this was untenable, then work through converting it all. When I quit, it was because I was never allowed to fix the DB Schema, and when we moved from 60 to 1500 users, the system started freezing because the User table, which contained a plain text password, also had 200 odd columns and was hit by EVERYTHING. When that started freezing, my boss told me I had a day to fix it with no downtime or my job was in danger. So I got another job.
I fought for years to encrypt those passwords. We had data about pets but I insisted if I worked through all those usernames and passwords, I'd find a few that worked with Bank of America
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Nope. Just ADO and XML and raw VB code. Adding, I'm not the one who wrote it but I taught the guy that did how to code when we were teenagers. LOL. We ended up working together for about 3 years.
What a nightmare that must have been.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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It was a persistent nightmare. Recurring because I foolishly worked for him again a few years later.
I bought him an ASP.NET MVC book and offered to help him learn it, he yelled at me and quit. He rehired me because he needed me and fired me when he thought he didn't (he was wrong)
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Ugh. I'm sorry. I've been in a few nightmare jobs myself. I feel you.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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There are so many parts of development today, somebody can be above average in one aspect, and below in another. Some people might be really good at backend stuff, but have lesser skills in frontend things, for example.
Also, it's within context of your population, I suppose. I'm not trying to justify using ADO.NET and passing raw DataSets/DataTables/etc around like my co-workers "just because that's what we've always done"; I'm trying to get our code to use EF/linq and pass around strongly typed objects. But I keep getting resistence. Herp-derp, let's add another sproc to retrieve this data...
There are probably things that they're better at than me though. It's just that those things aren't apparent at the current moment.
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