What I wish I had known when starting my development career
Dear new developer, I've spent a lot of my time maintaining working code. I think that is more typical of software developers than working in greenfield development. Yes, there are definitely jobs where you are writing more new code than maintaining, upgrading, bug fixing and improving old code (startups without product market fit being one, … Continue reading Always leave the code better than you found it
This is a guest post from James Turnbull. Enjoy. Dear new developer, Steve Jobs made the phrase "Good artists copy, great artists steal" famous in the tech industry. However, there's considerable debate about the origin of the expression. Ironically, he was possibly cribbing from Picasso, who might have been cribbing from Igor Stravinsky, William Faulkner, … Continue reading Choose inspiration over imitation
Dear new developer, Just like you should learn a text editor, you should learn an integrated development environment (aka IDE). This is typically a standalone program focused on one or more programming languages. They range from free to a couple of hundred bucks in pricing. Using an IDE will give you the following benefits: It … Continue reading Learn an IDE
Dear new developer, When I was starting out, I thought that software development was all about code. After all, that was the main thing I was working on. Well, maybe not the main thing, as I needed to know what code to write, how to interface with other code, what was the problem being solved, … Continue reading Software is about people, not code
Dear new developer, Coding is so much more than typing into a computer. Other things that matter: knowing who to talk to what to build when to discuss high and low level concepts other processes like testing and documentation communicating progress course correcting when a project goes awry These are all skills you need to … Continue reading Learn to type quickly
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)
This is a guest post from Andrew Rondeau. Enjoy. Dear New Developer, Don’t show up an a new job and immediately try to change the tabbing and/or bracing style. This is especially important if the codebase you work on has a very consistent style that all of the other developers follow. Why? Tabbing and bracing … Continue reading Don’t try to change the tabbing / bracing style
Dear new developer, You are probably going to be dealing with text files sometime during your development career. These could be plain text, csv, or json. They may have data you want to get out, or log files you want to examine. You may be transforming from one format to another. Now, if this is … Continue reading Learn a little jq, awk and sed
Dear new developer, If you want to be good at interviews, learn your algorithms. Loads of companies treat algorithm knowledge as a proxy for general problem solving ability. It makes a certain sort of sense--you have to break down a problem into pieces, turn it into something software can digest, and implement it in code. … Continue reading Learn your standard library
Dear new developer, I wrote previously about when to throw in the towel. Now I want to mention when you shouldn't. Anything worth doing is hard. That includes software development. There are times, sure, when it feels like you're a superhero. When the code is flowing. When you can hold the entire system in your … Continue reading Know when to not throw in the towel
Letters To A New Developer 