Enter The Matrix

So there's this thing on the web called the Programmer Competency Matrix.  It's a skills rubric written by an experienced developer used to gauge one's mastery in certain programming competencies.  It's exciting to see all the skills I have to learn, but at the same time, quite scary that many of them might as well have been written in an alien language.

A fitting continuum.  Noob on the left.

It's as good a test as any to gauge my starting abilities.  I'm happy to report that I'm not 2^n in every category.  I consider myself the highest level, log(n), in the area of Knowledge > Blogs :)  I have done some basic programming tutorials in a few different languages, i.e., html/css, php, javascript, mysql, python.  I have even taken what I consider a bit more in-depth look at Python, although my inexperience doesn't allow a good comparison.

Feel free to follow along, but this is mostly an indicator for myself.  Here is a chart of where I stand:

These squares won't mean much if you didn't follow the link.  There are some areas where I felt I didn't even deserve level 0, but others where I was a little between 0 and 1.  I erred on the side of conservatism.  Obviously, I was going to have 0 for Experience.  I did rather well in the 'meat' of Programming skills... probably because a lot of those categories have looser correlations with the actual art of developing software than others, like code organization.

There are a couple of reasons why I like this chart.  It shows me where my skills/knowledge/experience gaps are, thus providing an unsorted map of specific things I should try to dive into.  It's also a way to periodically check my own progress.  Perhaps I'll make it a habit to re-evaluate using this rubric every month or two.  Further, I think it's a great visual way to address the fact that I don't have a related degree to a potential employer.  I can't wait to fill this thing up... it's like a real-life video game!

On that note, I found this awesome blog post about Levelling Up As A Developer.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself.  It's time to hit the e-books.