Thread by @leeb

There’s a moment in the upcoming #GraphQLDocumentary from @schrockn: “Lee brought deep hardcore computer science; he can write a parser, a compiler.”

I’m the only one of our team without a CS background or degree. I had impostor syndrome for years and taught myself to catch up.

I actually learned how grammars and parsers worked to improve our GraphQL parser. I read everything I could get my hands on so I would sound competent to my team.

That last minute research put all the context in my fresh memory to make choices informed by open source

Same with compilers. I learned how compilers worked by digging in LLVM and Babel (very different) to learn how to build a better validator and executor for GraphQL. Open source projects were my research material.

I think my fear of appearing unlearned led me to start cautious and get frequent feedback from my team.

My having learned everything very recently meant I had no dogma or thought of what a “right way” to do something was, and no past project to say “I’ll do it like that again”

If anything, I think I’m less good at making unbiased technical decisions now than I was then. I’m warped by my experiences of what’s worked and not worked.

I over rely on my own experience since I have it now, and under rely on rapid research to get up to speed.