Dear new developer, If you don't know what you don't know, it's hard to learn it. There are so many resources for learning, but if you can't find them, you're going to have a hard time taking advantage of them. Sometimes you need to spend time learning what you need to spend time learning. That … Continue reading Google can’t help if you don’t know the words
Dear new developer, For me, there comes a point at the end of every project where I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of the project. I'm sick of the technology. I'm sick of project management system. I'm sick of the code. Sometimes, I just want to see the whole thing burn. Or better, just … Continue reading Sometimes you just have to ship it
This is a guest post from Tim Bourguignon. Enjoy. Dear new developer, Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a black chalk board in a dark room. The board carried remainders of countless creations. Diagrams that could pass as hieroglyphs for the non-educated eye. Or well crafted UML to the … Continue reading Make it work
Dear new developer, I hope you enjoyed reading these letters. I've certain enjoyed writing them. When I chat with new developers, at meetups, on slack, or via email, they let me know when letters are helpful or unclear. They suggest topics. They give me feedback, which, when you're writing into the howling abyss of the … Continue reading “Letters To a New Developer”, the book
Dear new developers, Update July 5, 2020: I now have a launch date and a cover. You may have noticed the pace of new letters has slowed down a bit. There have been some fantastic guest posts, but there's only been one new letter per week for a while. There's a reason for that. I'm … Continue reading I’m writing the book I wished I’d read
Dear new developer, Read books about software development. Seriously. Now, you won't learn the latest techniques from books. Those will live online in blogs or videos (or in papers, if you work in an area like machine learning influenced by academia). Nor will you learn a lot that you can put to immediate use to … Continue reading Read great books about software development
Dear new developer, I suggest you take some of your ample free time (if you have it) and write a technical book. I've written one book and doing so gives you a deep understanding both of the technology you choose to write about and of the difficulties of doing so. It will give you instant … Continue reading Write a technical ebook
Letters To A New Developer 