I Built a Developer Personality Test (because why not)

So… I built a thing. It’s called Developer Type Assessment and it tells you what kind of developer brain you have 🧠💻

Not “are you good at algorithms” (pls no), but more like:

• do you ship fast or overthink everything
• do you love clean code or just want it to work
• do you debug like a detective or YOLO your way through bugs

👉 You can try it here: https://ehsanpo.github.io/developertype/

I honestly started this as a “fun weekend project” and then suddenly I was deep into psychology, scoring algorithms, and arguing with myself about color contrast at midnight. Classic.

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The Idea (aka: what was I thinking?)

I didn’t want a skills test. No quizzes like “what does this JavaScript output?” (trauma 😭).

I wanted something more psychological. Something that feels like real dev life.

Every question forces a trade-off:

• ship fast vs build it right
• explore vs maintain
• solo grinding vs team collaboration

Your answers slowly pull you toward one of 12 developer archetypes like:

• The Ship It 🚀
• The Detective 🕵️
• The Craftsman 🛠️
• (yes, Architecture Astronaut is there too 👀)

No “right” answers. Just vibes.

💡 Inspiration

This assessment was inspired by the article The 12 Developer Mindsets I’ve Seen in My Career by @notadevbuthere. The archetypes and core concepts are based on real developer behaviors and patterns observed in software teams.

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The Stack (kept it simple, promise)

I didn’t want backend drama. No auth. No DB. No servers. Just frontend fun.

• React + Vite – fast, clean, no pain
• React Router – with HashRouter because GitHub Pages 😅
• Pure CSS – no Tailwind, no frameworks, just vibes and CSS variables
• html2canvas – for downloading results as images (this was surprisingly fun)

That’s it. No magic. No enterprise nonsense.

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Cool Stuff I’m Proud Of ✨

🧠 Smart-ish Scoring

Each answer gives weighted points to multiple archetypes.

So you’re not just “one thing”. The algorithm can notice stuff like:

“huh, this person scores high in Ship It AND Craftsman… interesting tension 👀”

It actually felt like teaching the app to understand personalities. Kinda creepy. Kinda cool.

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🔗 Shareable Results & Download

Results are encoded into the URL using base64. No backend needed – just pure frontend magic ✨

Which means:

• share the link and anyone can see your result
• no retaking the test
• no database, no servers, my wallet is happy
• download your result as a PNG
• share directly to LinkedIn (yes, devs love this stuff)

Encoding state into the URL turned out to be insanely powerful. Sharing just works™ and I wanted it to feel like an achievement unlock 🎖️, not just text on a screen.

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The Questions (harder than coding tbh)

20 questions. 4 answers each.

This part took the longest.

Each answer had to:

• feel real
• map clearly to personality traits
• not scream “THIS IS THE CORRECT ANSWER” 🙃

Example question:

You find a messy file that somehow works. What do you do?

• Rewrite it from scratch (perfectionist)
• Ship features and move on (pragmatic)
• Understand why it works first (detective)
• Refactor slowly over time (balanced dev)

If you read that and felt personally attacked… good 😈

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Things I Learned (aka: bugs taught me stuff)

🔑 React keys REALLY matter

I had a weird bug where answers from one question leaked into another.

Turns out:

key={answer.id}

was NOT enough.

Fix:

key={`${question.id}-${answer.id}`}

React stopped gaslighting me immediately.

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⏱️ Tiny delays = better UX

That 300ms pause after clicking an answer?

Remove it and the app feels broken. Add it and suddenly everything feels intentional.

UX is wild.

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Stats (because devs love numbers)

• 20 questions
• 12 archetypes
• ~5 minutes
• 0 backend servers
• Hosted on GitHub Pages
• Built in 2 hours

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Try It 👇

👉 Take the test: https://ehsanpo.github.io/developertype/

👉 Open source on GitHub: https://github.com/ehsanpo/developertype

If you try it, tell me what type you got 👀 And if you read this far… wow. You’re definitely not “The Ship It” 😅

Built for fun. Learned a ton. Highly recommend building weird little projects like this.

Now excuse me while I add one more feature that I definitely don’t need. 🚀