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Comment by Aaronontheweb | Hacker News Reader

Author here: as I state in the article, every programmer is at least one of these at some point in their career, myself included.

I was definitely an Island as recently as a few years ago, and I've been an Artist before too. It's part of the learning process.

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To clarify, I've been many of these simultaneously, and I'm not sure that it's changed much; different circumstances bring out different aspects.

Apparently, I'm a melting pot of neuroses.

> Apparently, I'm a melting pot of neuroses.

It's great to be a human, isn't it?

Don't forget impostor syndrome! It sounds as if you're hard on yourself, possibly for that reason.

Nah, I got a handle on that a while ago. I know my skills and I know myself, it's just sobering to see so many of my motivations and behaviours described accurately. If I was convinced these programmer aspects were entirely negative, I would've succumbed to the debilitating effects of impostor syndrome years ago.

IMO, the island archetype is probably the most productive. At least in my experience, IM/Outlook/Thunderbird really kills what I can get done. And the corporate emails...

Nice post. I have traits of an Island and a Pet (Python) Technologist but you omitted listing my top archetype: The OCD Refactorist. I can't stand copypasta code, I have to make it DRY asap (plus many more refactorings, typically resulting in shorter, minimalistic code).

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