Dear new developer,
Dev.to is a relatively new community of developers. A few years ago, someone on that community asked for advice for junior developers, and I found the answers fascinating. Here are a few of my favorites.
People should respect you. It’s your right to push back against disrespectful interactions. If it’s waved away with “oh, [person] is just like that,” know that a) that is bullshit and b) both the person being disrespectful AND the one dismissing it are wrong. – Sarah Mei
Respectful communication and interaction is the foundation of trust, which is the foundation of team building, which is the foundation of software delivery.
Not getting your pull request through code review first time is okay. Everybody has their own approaches to problems, and a comment on your code review saying “X could be improved by Y because Z” doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not a good enough developer for only thinking of X, rather than Y. It’s usually more a case of your haven’t encountered a scenario that leads you to see the reasoning Z that causes you to use Y over X yet. – Aidan Walters-Williams
We all have something to learn. And our code is not ourselves, so when someone tries to improve our code, they aren’t attacking us.
Reporting a problem you’ve discovered is good, thorough analyses are better, proposing a solution is best. It doesn’t have to be right, it just has to start the discussion. – Dian Fey
It’s always good to go a step beyond reporting a problem because a) additional investigation may reveal it isn’t actually a problem and b) if it is a problem, the more you provide up front, the easier it will be for anyone trying to solve the problem (including future you) to replicate the context and hence investigate the problem with less effort.
There are a lot of great gems in the post.
Sincerely,
Dan
Letters To A New Developer 