Dear new developer, Chances are high that you'll be working with other code as a developer. I remember when I was first starting out and saw the acronym API everywhere. I had no idea what it stood for. In case you are in the same boat, it means Appliciation Programming Interface. What that means is … Continue reading Web APIs for new developers
Dear new developer, The more experienced I get, the more I realize that the hard part of software development (for the kinds of software development I do, primarily business web applications) is not the coding. It's the communication. You need to communicate, often among shifting parties over weeks, months or years: why you are building … Continue reading Talk first, code later
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
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
Dear new developer, This post covers some great tips on getting through your first year. It starts off ominously: The first year as a programmer is one of the most frustrating things a homo sapien can experience. You're thrust from the world of ambiguous human communication into the icy waters of cold, hard correctness. There … Continue reading On surviving your first year as a developer
Dear new developer, I enjoyed this post about how to learn. While the author toots his own horn a bit much for me, he makes some very valid points about how to learn. Most importantly, you want to learn using the best resource. What is best? The best resource is a bit of a lie … Continue reading How to learn things, fast
Dear new developer, I've written before about my belief in blogging as a way to sharpen your thoughts and give examples of your expertise. Here's a post along the same lines. From the post: People always try to find someone they can trust. You can go through a series of interviews and hope that they … Continue reading Benefits of blogging
Dear new developer, I remember reading this article a few years ago and being struck by the wisdom contained therein. Code and development is crucial to building many businesses, but as developers we often get wrapped up in the code to the exclusion of other things. I have definitely discounted the value of other aspects … Continue reading Schleps
Dear new developer, This post by a Bloomberg developer catalogs everything they learned sitting next to a senior developer for a year. Lots of good stuff in there. Favorite excerpts: How to handle an outage: For when things go wrong, and they will, the golden rule is minimizing client impact. My natural tendency when things … Continue reading Things learned from a senior developer
Dear new developer, This post talks about how to ask for mentoring, but the principles apply to getting in touch with any busy person. Busy people are by definition busy, and get a large number of emails and requests every day. (Here's a VC talking about the difference between ignoring and not replying, and how … Continue reading How to get the attention of a busy person
Letters To A New Developer 