Comment by TheSheriff on "If you want to be top 5% programmer, how to know when you made it?"

What happens when you reach your 5% goal? Do you stop learning/growing/adapting?

I would suggest such a goal be tracked using the mistakes you make. I wouldn't measure it by knowledge of a language. If you want to be a really good programmer then I'd consider, most importantly, ones ability to solve problems quickly, efficiently and accurately. However, I wouldn't consider this to be the only component to the goal. This is a multi-faceted situation, as such should be treated with care if one truly wants to reach it.

I'll try and break it down into bulletpoints and explain in more detail if possible.

problem solving ability (most important)
communication (both to humans (other dev as well as everyone else) and to machines)
ability to work, effectively, in a team or alone.
Code quality. (comments, structures, naming conventions, project setup, workspace setup).
Program language agnostic. This helps solidify concepts and problem solving in different environments and under different circumstances.
Fullstack dev (at least having either worked in the environment for a while or just aware of the network topology etc, i.e. where the data goes /comes from and looks like.)
Aware of the history of programming, as well as trends and where we are heading.
Devops + networks
Soft skills (communication, presentation, ability to explain complex concepts on different levels understanding (ELI5 - Explain Like I'm 5).
Aware of/likes to tinker with abstract concepts (or just concepts currently outside of ones current skill set) such as crypto and machine learning/ai, to name only a couple.

Basically being completely self sufficient but can also help others get to the same goal, thus making the whole team more efficient. These are the things I believe make a well rounded software engineer who can tackle any situation, on and off the computer.

Edit::
My answer is in relation to my interpretation of the goal. I changed the goal to How do I become a better developer?
I also agree with j these kind of goals tend to lead to a more ego fuelled way of thinking rather than more important things.

As long as you're doing something towards the goal, then you'll get there - regardless of how little you do. You could set yourself an exam or something? Obviously people learn and work at different rates so it just comes down to how much time you can put into it really. If you live, eat and breathe it then you'll see more improvement more quickly. Could look into things like the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence, the 4 stages of competence as well as the inchworm. jaredtendler.com/inchworm-learning

The goal is qualitative. Therefore requires more thought than just a number increasing to show improvement. Perhaps something along the lines of ones ability to solve problems quicker or more efficiently as well as the ability to grasp complex concept quicker or have a good understanding of a larger number of concepts.

Hope this helps solidify some of my points in my original answer.

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