Ask HN: What's one coding habit that separates great dev from average dev?

The discussion asks which coding habit most distinguishes an excellent developer from an average one, and the replies offer several related answers rather than a single consensus. One commenter argues that productivity alone is not enough: without documentation, fast work becomes a fragile hack. Because much software work involves maintenance, developers should record why important decisions were made; otherwise, future maintainers may remove or rebuild systems without understanding the constraints behind them. The same commenter also emphasizes continuous learning, warning that developers who stop improving risk falling behind as the field changes.

Other replies focus on judgment and responsibility. One says that developers using AI still need to protect systems from security vulnerabilities rather than prioritize shipping speed. Another argues that technical competence is assumed, and identifies the more important habit as refusing work that does not address a meaningful problem. In this view, software development requires choosing which problems to solve, not attempting to satisfy every request from product managers or executives. The commenter criticizes task-tracking culture for encouraging teams to treat software as a way to solve everyone’s problems. Taken together, the responses value more than output: they stress understandable, secure code, ongoing learning, and discernment about what is worth building.