7+ Habits that Made Me a Better Software Engineer
by Parker · 39 things on Twos
- ✓ Contribute to open source
- ✓ Read open source code
- ✓ Rebuild projects using what you’ve learned
- ✓ Write better comments
- Reading programming books
- Reading books on programming languages, project architecture, best practices, and different technologies and theories helped me learn and improve my skills.
- ✓ A chapter a day adds up to immense knowledge over a few years.
- “For the best return on your money, pour your purse into your head.” ― Benjamin Franklin
- Watch tutorials
- Tutorials help you understand how technologies work together to build a full program/application and how to do something new.
- “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” ― Pablo Picasso
- Build something every day
- ✓ In order to get better, you need to practice. And why not practice every day?
- Start by building along with tutorials/classes and work up to building your own ideas
- Wes Bos' JavaScript30 course of 30 small projects in 30 days is a great place to start https://javascript30.com/
- “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” – Benjamin Franklin
- Launch your own projects
- There are many details you need to figure out to build your own application.
- Deploying your own project will help you gain experience to improve your skills
- "Little things make big things happen." - John Wooden
- Prepare for interviews
- A programming job can be a path to learn and grow as a developer.
- In order to get a good job, you need to prepare with the fundamental programming concepts and problem-solving skills
- I recommend reading "cracking the coding interview" and practicing coding tests online at LeetCode
- Write pseudo code before you start coding
- It can be challenging to think through all the different edge cases and issues when you start building
- Take a few minutes to plan your code before you dive into it
- “An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing.” - Dale Carnegie.
- Use better naming conventions
- Nothing is worse than going back to improve a feature or fix a bug and not being able to understand what you wrote
- They say half of the battle is naming your variables and functions
- Use longer more descriptive names and your future self will thank you
- Use Twos
- With everything you're learning, you'll want to have a way to remember it all
- Twos is an app and website to simply remember *things*
- I use it for daily tasks, making lists, planning out code, setting goals and much more.
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- These 7 habits helped me get a job at Qualcomm, a tech startup in San Francisco, my dream job at Google, and found my own company
- I wish you nothing but success on your software journey. I hope these habits help you accomplish your goals