This is a guest post from Josh Thompson. Enjoy. Dear New Developer, You know that there's a chasm between your skill level and that of the mythical "senior software developer". If you build a list of topics you encounter on your job that, if learned to a deep enough level, would put you on the … Continue reading Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or “Deep Work”
Dear new developer, Depending on what your life looks like, you may have some time where your body is occupied, but your mind is not. At least not 100%. Tasks like doing the dishes, running and driving all fall into that category. In this extra time, you may want to listen to podcasts. Most smartphones … Continue reading Listen to podcasts
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
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”
This is a guest post from Dave Mayer. Enjoy. Dear New Dev- After 22 years of 'production level' experience in the real world, I'm writing to share three mantras that have led to more happiness and more success for us. To be clear, these are DAILY mantras. Not weekly, not monthly, not annually. Daily. They … Continue reading Three Mantras to Live By
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, 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, Sometimes you have to learn or do something boring. I know there are times when I've had to schlep, whether that is data entry, learning a technology that I'm not thrilled about, or tediously manually replicating a bug many many times to try to debug it. A couple of tips on how … Continue reading Help, I can’t learn/do something because it is boring!
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
Letters To A New Developer 