Day 1 to Code God

How to grow as a Developer

In my own career as a coder/programmer/developer I remember starting out, and some things being really difficult. I would see people online, follow screencasts and wonder "These people had to start learning similar to what I learned starting out...how is it they seem to know so much more?"

That question never really got answered, but as I approach my 10th year doing code, I find that I somehow just know stuff. Or maybe not that I know it, but I seem to just be able to run with something new much faster than I used to.

So the rest of this talk is sort of my theory as to why that is, which I hope might provide some pointers for others.

Also, Code God is kind of a joke, I think most people have to put in time to learn things, and there are a few, very rare, who just pick up these details early and fast.

"These people had to start learning similar to what I learned starting out...how is it they seem to know so much more?"

Secret Sauce

What separates experienced devs from beginners?

Deep Knowledge

Traditional Learning

Books

Clean Code
Refactoring
Pragmatic Programmer
Design Patterns

Tutorials

Screencasts

Podcasts

Debugging

Debugging is a crucial skill to top programmers/devs. At some point errors will happen, knowing what is happening and how to fix it is difficult. But when errors happen, before googling, try to think about the changes you made that are now erroring. Why would it do that? Again, I am emphasising wrestling with the code to understand it.

Some error messages are cryptic, and you will need to Google them. I picked up a tip a while ago, a tutorial I was following the dev was narrating what he was expecting. Sometimes he expected an error and was surprised if he didn't get it, and actually found a bug because there was no error. This indicates a good mental model of the code and how the code should behave. Try stating what you expect to happen before running your code, and see if it behaves properly. This is a good way to learn.

Build Toy Apps

Another way to gain deeper knowledge, is to build toy apps. A toy app, is something you kind of know will never be used in production, you're going into it with the goal of learning. The great thing about them is that they are a fresh starting point. There is no overhead/legacy code you have to deal with. There are no deadlines. You get to make all the decisions and you are free to build what you think is important.
You can practice making decisions, and you don't have to learn how a big existing system works in order to make changes.
You can practice new techniques and see how those play out in terms of working within a system.
Another great thing is that at the beginning, this toy app can have a small focus. Which hopefully means there is little code, and it is easy to reason about. This makes working within easier.
This is also a good place to learn about testing, since there should not be a "who knows where to start" situation.

Write Tests

Plan then code

"Design what you want to build, then implement it later."

Working != Quality

"Maintainability"

Break Habits

"Everything looks like a nail, when all you have is a hammer"

When you start out, you usually learn the basics:

Maybe you learn how to Hello World.
Variables
Control Structures (IF, while, etc)
Data Structures (Array, struct, collection, etc)

And often, this is a imperative/procedural language. But to some degree, these are considered bad practices as you advance. So I think you have to break these habits in order to improve. Think of If, If If, Else, If, Foreach, If, Else, Else.....This is considered bad code, but it's one of the first things you learn basically.

So learn them, because they have their place, but be aware that they may not be the best approach.

Mentality

Confidence

Staying Power

Tenacious

Read Source Code

It's not all about code

Automates

Increase Efficiency

Simplifies Process

Know that being a dev isnt all about code, it's about what that code provides that really provides value.

Solves Business Problems (usually with code)
- Automates things
- Save time
Increases efficiency
- Save time
- faster turn-around
Simplifies process
- save time
- more effective
- less steps