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Yay! I'm West Africa's No. 1 on Stackoverflow

Just to chip in a bit, I'm also the No. 1 C++ Dev (in terms of score) for the region. If you don't know much about Stackoverflow, you may want to Read My Stackoverflow story. Stackoverflow is the world's largest resource of answers to questions most software developers have encountered and will probably encounter.

Disclaimer:
This is by no means a true representation of facts. I must unequivocally state that there are other programmers better than myself in West Africa. You'll find out at the end of this post.

This post is based from a metric obtained from Stackoverflow's Data explorer as of 28th May, 2017. And as every record, it will be broken in no time. Neither do I intend to dedicate any efforts to maintain the position, I've got better things doing. :-). But I think its not bad to brag about it after finding out.


Some time this year, I became the legendary 355th Gold badge earner in C++. Being 355th Gold Badge earner meant that I was the 355th person awarded the Gold Badge in C++. This is the highest award given to anyone when a condition based on reputation (actually score) is met, and it comes with some extra shiny badge on your profile, and an extra privilege on marking duplicate questions.

I obtained the list of West African Countries from Wikipedia, then used it to execute a query using Stackexchange's Data Explorer. The query link I used can be found here.

Of cause, by world metric, my reputation is not high (luckily reputation score isn't a measure of expertise :P ). Mine is just in lower ends of a 5 digit number. The highest ranking Developer on Stackoverflow, Jon Skeet is in the very high ends of a 6 digit number.




I was surprised when my name turned out No.1, because some time back, I recall executing a single query for Nigeria, and there was someone with over 27K reputation gathered mostly from Python Programming Language. Well, he apparently modified his Stackoverflow profile to reflect his new location, though He's a Nigerian. I have a whole lot of stuff doing outside stackoverflow, and so, I spend little time there and see if I could answer a few questions. I make attempt to do so weekly. But I visit the site daily.

Like I said, this metric is shortsighted because:
  • Not every software developer in West Africa is on stackoverflow
  • Not every software developer in West Africa on Stackoverflow indicated their current country of residence, and those that indicated may not use correct spellings .../shrugs
  • Not all the software developers in West Africa have the luxury of time to stay on Stackoverflow gathering reputations
However, this metric means:
  • I understand the domain I mostly answer, reasonably well.
  • I can explain technical concepts reasonably well.
  • I am reasonably up-to-date
  • I understand Computer Science fundamentals reasonably well
  • There is a good chance I write code to be read by humans, not compilers

Well, its good enough. Check out my profile and my answers! And I have in on my CV. :-)

Written by Timothy.

Comments

  1. Super awesome. You are doing a great job. Keep it up bros!

    ReplyDelete

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