What is the route to becoming a strong programmer? Answers from programmers from Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and more.
Originally published at https://dmitryshvetsov.com on March 25, 2021.
How would it change your programming if you could learn how other programmers have become strong, how they solve problems, and what tools they are using?
For me it all started with the idea of inheriting the experience of programmers within my circle. I asked my friends and former colleagues whom they consider to be strong programmers, then I made a list, prepared some questions and started asking!
I didn’t want to limit myself to this circle so I included the question “which programmers do you consider to be “strong?”, and then…
Discover what could be holding you back
When you become good at something, you can hit a wall in your development. No matter how hard you try, you feel like you can’t break through it. Pushing harder doesn’t pay off as much as before.
In this case, the solution might be not to add something but actually to remove something.
“It’s only by saying NO that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.”
— Steve Jobs
Our habits and what we believe in determine 90% of our actions. To be a successful developer, we must become successful first in thoughts and then in actions.
…
5 Things to Change To Finally Get That Dream Job
It is extremely hard to seek a job for months and get rejection after rejection in all kinds of forms.
It is also hard to maintain self-confidence after consequent rejections, numerous letters without an answer, and months without a result.
I know this because I went through it after I quit my job and started pursuing my dream to work for an awesome company. It took me 3 months to land that dream job and required me to adapt.
In the next 10 minutes, I’m going to share exactly what I changed-and what you can change to finally get that…
If we consume garbage, chances are high that our life will be garbage, and as a consequence our output is garbage.
What we consume and hold in our minds is essentially our life.
Our input is vital.
If we consume garbage, chances are high that our life will be garbage, and as a consequence our output is garbage.
By just changing input that goes into our minds, we can transform the output that we are bringing to the world.
The Developers Around You Determine Your Level
“Surround yourself only with people who are going to take you higher.”
― Oprah Winfrey
If you are a sole freelancer, or a developer who works with equally strong developers, then you miss out on the possibility of learning from peers. …
Have you ever worked extra hours late at night on an important overdue task and had no luck in finishing it, but the next morning you solved it in 15 minutes? Here’s why.
We have limited brain fuel-mental energy to make well-thought-out decisions. As long as we have it, we are able to make good decisions. But when we are low on it, we can have problems deciding even small things, like where we want to have a Friday night dinner with friends, even if we only have two options at hand.
Studies show that people make more mistakes and…
Every great magic trick consists of three acts–the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. We as developers can learn the principle behind the magic and use it to get “the Prestige”.
“The Prestige “ is one of my favorite movies. I love an entertaining story with a rich plot, and that movie is a hundred percent like this.
The main character unexpectedly achieves the most important win in his life. How did he do it? I won’t tell you here–you’ll have to watch it yourself to figure it out. The movie is totally worth it.
What software developers can learn…
The story of three months of failure, what failure taught me, and what it led me to.
When I was a kid, I loved to make my own board games. We lived modestly in a very isolated city named Yakutsk, in a sparsely populated area in northeastern Russia.
We had a shortage of toys and games in our family, and I loved to make my own games by drawing on large sheets of paper. My younger brother and I made a game similar to Monopoly, a fantasy-league wrestling game, and hockey games. I’d play for hours with him and my friends.
I also had an old Russian clone of a ZX Spectrum 8-bit computer, with the Sinclair…
Even one simple change in your day can make you twice as productive. In the article, you will find eight ways to become more productive.
The trick is that most programmers are too focused on how to write programs, and they overlook the essential things that make people productive.
Originally published at dmitryshvetsov.com on February 19, 2020.
Art Of Small Improvements
Kaizen is the process of continually seeking out incremental improvements and constantly making small changes to improve. Kaizen was the reason for the Japanese economic miracle after World War II.
You can apply Kaizen to yourself, your team, and your project.
Small changes don’t require a lot of time or effort, and they create momentum for the next change. …
Book review of “99 Bottle of OOP” by Sandi Metz and Katrina Owen
Read the most recent version of this article.
This book is about writing cost-effective, maintainable, and pleasing code … [by] … finding the right abstractions.
Sandi Metz, Katrina Owen. 99 Bottles of OOP (Kindle Locations 119–120, 213). Kindle Edition.
by B. Batsov, Uncle Bob, K. Beck, J. Atwood, and DHH
Read the most recent version of this article on my personal blog.
Read the most recent version of this article on my personal blog.
Never ask advice of someone with whom you wouldn’t want to trade places — Darren Hardy
The idea to collect a list of books that knowledgeable, experienced and well-known programmers recommends to read comes to me from The long Journey to Ruby Mastery conference talk by Bozhidar Batsov.
Here I share what I have found so far: the books recommendations from the Bozhidar talk, lists by Uncle Bob, and Kent Beck, books from blog posts by…
Dmitry Shvetsov
Software Engineer, Instructor, and Mentor. Author https://gum.co/team-lead-101. Join my newsletter https://gift.dmitryshvetsov.com/
