The journey began when this genius set out to Harvard. Little did anyone know that Mark Zuckerberg will one day change the landscape of the modern day technology.
But he never got to finish the degree and in 2005, Zuckerberg dropped out to start “The Facebook.” But as the business grew, he had to change his focus from coding to ‘managing the business’.
In 2016, when he was visiting Nigeria in August 2016, he publicly admitted that giving up coding was “a little sad.”
“There is an elegance to writing code that I miss,” Zuckerberg said during a Q&A session with tech entrepreneurs and developers in Lagos, Nigeria. “The code always does what you want – and people don’t.”
Just so you know, even though Zuckerberg loves programming, he was majoring in psychology before dropping out of Harvard. This is the reason his peers don’t put him as a very accomplished programmer.
On TopCoder, which is a site for coders to improve their rank and skills, he’s only placed on the third level. In comparison, Adam D’Angelo, former CTO of Facebook and founder of Quora, is at the top level, “red.”
So, it is very likely that Zuckerberg’s success is a combination of commitment, work ethics, and creativity rather than just programming skills.
Last January, Zuckerberg expressed his desire to come back into the programming, so he announced a plan to build an AI system to run his home. This was also part of his latest personal-growth challenges, and he claimed that he spent between 100 and 150 hours on the project to create Jarvis, a home assistant.
But, a Quora user Alexandra Isenegger who is the CEO of Linkilaw, isn’t too impressed. She says,
“What Zuckerberg built for his family home in less than 150 hours is what the best AI talent in the tech industry would devote thousands of hours or a full year of coding to create.
I’m not disputing Zuckerberg’s programming skills, Jarvis is testament to the extent of his talent, but being able to devote time and creativity to a complex project such as Jarvis is a luxury few can afford.”
There’s no doubting his love for coding though.
According to another story in New York Magazine, Zuckerberg has apparently forgotten all about the coding. Feross Aboukhadijeh, who was a former Facebook Intern and creator of YouTube Instant, spoke to NY Mag:
But, as the Groups team was adding the finishing touches to its product, Zuckerberg said that he wanted to write a few lines. “Everybody was like, Ohhhh, Zuck’s gonna write code,” says Feross. Someone set up an easy bug for him to fix—adding a link to a picture, or something—and he went to work. Five minutes passed. Twenty minutes. An hour. “It took him like two hours to do something that would take one of us who’s an engineer like five minutes.”
But then again, he’s the owner of a multi-billion business!
What are your views on Zuckerberg’s coding prowess?
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