Ask HN: How do you know if you're any good?

You know you're good when somebody who actually uses what you wrote tells you that they love what you've done. It could be somebody in your target audience, the person who takes over your project, or even yourself for a personal project, but for me, that's the moment when you've arrived.

You can obsess about development process all you want, have fun trying to push bits until they sweat, and create code that is like executable art, but I still believe that even computer programming is ultimately centered around people.

Whenever I find an open source project thats written in a language I understand, I usually take awhile to explore the web code repository and see what kind of structure they have setup and how their code is interacting.

I don't know of any qualifiers that separate good from bad, but if you follow basic coding conventions and the thing works (and is secure) you are probably good enough. Either way, its a good way to learn.

Does the code do what it's suppose to? Is it maintainable? Is it scalable?

If you answered Yes to all the above...then you are doing fine.

You know you're good when you realize what you have built is crap and start improving it.