How to Become a Better Developer

Software engineers take a lot of time gaining skills and learning things that they probably don’t need in the end. This happens because we like to cover as much as possible and be ‘prepared’ for anything. Only after starting the job at a company, we see that the skills we used to get the job don’t match the ones needed in everyday work.

Here is some advice, skills, and apps an effective programmer should integrate into their professional life.

1. Github

If you are a software developer, it’s critical that you understand Github. This is one of the most popular tools for projects, and it’s widely used. However, its usability it’s slightly confusing and there are a number of commands to memorize, but once you get the hang of it it’s a godlike sensation using it efficiently.

No matter what repository system your company uses, the system is both helpful if you use it correctly and a hindrance if used improperly. It doesn’t take much for a simple push or commit to turn into you spending hours trying to untangle some hodgepodge of multiple branches and forks. In addition, if you constantly forget to pull the most recent version of the repository, you will also be dealing with merge conflicts, and those are never fun.

2. Learn how to decipher other people’s code

We all know that the only person that writes code better than anyone is you, but having the ability to understand other’s code is a good skill for work. No matter how messy or poorly thought out a previous engineer’s code is, you still need to be able to wade through it. After all, it’s your job. Even when that engineer was you one year prior.

This skill benefits you in two ways. One, being able to read other people’s code is a great chance to learn what bad design is. While you are looking through other people’s code you learn what works and what doesn’t. More importantly, you learn what type of code is easy for another engineer to follow and what code is hard to follow.

3. Manage ‘Time and Meetings’

Whatever section of the programming industry that you are in meetings is not avoidable and sometimes not as fruitful. The skill here is to learn to manage when you are in a bad meeting and you are not getting things done, you need to quit it. We don’t mean literally hang up and don’t speak ever again but, rather take it by yourself and by your time to process things. It is better to move at your own speed than to get dragged down with someone else, not at the same pace as you.

4. Write ‘Simple Code’

One tendency younger engineers might have is to attempt to implement everything they know into one solution. There is this desire to take your understanding of object-oriented programming, data structures, design patterns, and new technologies and use all of that in every bit of code you write. You create an unnecessary complexity because it’s so easy to be overly attached to a solution or design pattern you have used in the past.

There is a balance between complex design concepts and simple code. Design patterns and object-oriented design are supposed to simplify code in the grand scheme of things. So, be sure to include things that are necessary for the project and not extravagant code.

5. Operational Design Thinking

One skill that is hard to think about is finding ways a user can misuse our program. This is the organizational setting is known as Operational Design Thinking, which means designing the program with end-user usage in mind — how our program could be used, what flaws they might find, and how can things go wrong using our program.

For instance, since much of programming is maintenance, it often means changing code that is highly tangled with other code. Even a simple alteration requires tracing every possible reference of an object, method, and/or API. Otherwise, it can be easy to accidentally break modules you don’t realize are attached. Even if you are just changing a data type in a database.