Skill stacking

Dear new developer, I found this post, "How to Become the Best in the World at Something", enlightening. The author is arguing that if you pick one area to be the best in, you're going to have to be very very good at it. For example, if I wanted to be the best in the … Continue reading Skill stacking →

What is the best surprise of being a new developer?

Dear new developer, I was asked recently at a talk I gave about what was the best surprise of being a new developer. I was talking at Turing School, and had discussed some of the things that surprised me when I was starting out. There are a lot of great things about being a developer. … Continue reading What is the best surprise of being a new developer? →

How to succeed at a larger company

Dear new developer, This Ask HN is worth a read, as there are some good tips on how to succeed in a larger company. I've been here for about a month now and still feel like I'm mostly just in free falling trying to figure out 95% of what anyone talks about or how to … Continue reading How to succeed at a larger company →

The perfect is the enemy of the good (and the done)

Dear new developer, When you are facing a problem, it can be very tempting to try to solve it perfectly. Handle all the possible edge cases, make it extensible, have it be configurable without code changes. As with everything in life, there's an opportunity cost to this perfection. If you're spending days perfecting a single … Continue reading The perfect is the enemy of the good (and the done) →

Video of My Develop Denver Presentation: Three Things I Wish I’d Known as a New Developer

Dear new developer, As I mentioned a while ago, I spoke at Develop Denver this year. The video of the presentation is up. It's about 45 minutes, including some great questions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmLzu1fPH6Y Enjoy. Sincerely, Dan

Learn SQL

Dear new developer, It's a good idea to learn SQL (which stands for structured query language). This is the language that the vast majority of data is stored in for most companies. The reason for this is that relational databases (which is what SQL is the main interface for) are very good at a wide … Continue reading Learn SQL →

Don’t be afraid to “fail”

This is a guest post from Cierra Nease. Enjoy. Dear new developer, “Failures” as a new developer are plenty -- but you might be asking, why is “failures” in quotes? To fail something is dependent upon one’s perspective. The only true failure is to quit working towards success. Every failure brings a small success in … Continue reading Don’t be afraid to “fail” →

Use copy/paste as much as you can

Dear new developer, Use copy and paste as much as you can. Not so much for code snippets from Stackoverflow, though that will save you some time hunting down mismatched parentheses. But this is especially useful whenever you are searching for errors or moving information between systems. For example, recently I had to find where … Continue reading Use copy/paste as much as you can →