What I wish I had known when starting my development career
Dear new developer, Take the time to write good commit messages. Such messages communicate intent across time, and live very close to the code. Here's an example of a bad commit message: Updated the code. There's no intent here. Yes, of course, you did update the code. Why? Inquiring minds want to know. updated the … Continue reading Write good commit messages
Dear new developer, This post, "They Didn't Teach Us This" is a great read. There’s a curious phenomenon that happens when new web developers take their first job. You’ve just gotten your CS degree or graduated from bootcamp, and you’ve spent months or years learning to write efficient code, practicing for interviews, and building portfolio … Continue reading A Crash Course for Your First Job in Software
This is a guest blog post from John Obelenus. Enjoy. Dear new developer, Even when I was a kid in school I hardly wrote things down. That’s why we had textbooks after all! I was baffled by other students in college furiously transcribing every word that came out of the professor’s mouth. Now I have … Continue reading Write that down!
Dear new developer, There's the concept of a JIT compiler. I was first introduced to it with the HotSpot Java compiler. The idea is that a compiler can look at code and find the code that executes often and optimize it, sometimes compiling it down to faster code, sometimes unrolling loops. I'm no compiler expert … Continue reading Be a Just in Time Learner, part I
Dear new developer, One time, not too many years ago, I was using git. I had used it for some personal projects, but hadn't used it in the team setting before. We were using this git branching model. I was creating feature branches and working on them. However, often I would be working on the … Continue reading Making mistakes is OK
Dear new developer, If in doubt, put it under version control. Version control is a way for you to keep track of the core nuts and bolts of code, which are files on the filesystem. Version control lets you make mistakes, err experiments, and roll back time to when things worked. Version control lets you … Continue reading Learn Version Control
Letters To A New Developer 