The following list are some things I am doing to become a better developer:
1. Find/Rediscover Your Passion
I’ve always believed that to be a great developer you have to have the passion. What is passion? You know, it’s that itch you get as you sit on the couch with your wife (or your husband) watching crappy reality TV and you can’t break your thoughts away from sneaking off to write some code. It’s that desire you feel to know all there is to know about your language, the framework, emerging new technologies, etc – just because it is fun to know it. It’s that code that is always in your head, just dying to get out. You’re not content with put in 8 hours a day writing code, you just have to find that extra time to do it just because you enjoy it. So, how do you rediscover that (or find it if you’ve never had it?). I think the rest of this list will help with that.
2. Remove Distractions
There’s always things to get in your way of improving yourself and staying focused on your goals. If you work at your home, like me, turn off the TV, shut the office door, establish a “work mode” that separates itself from “home mode”. I find it helps to turn off notification sound from Yahoo Messenger or whatever messenger do you use as well as other distracting notifications. I found that my eyes would automatically shift to the bottom right corner of my monitor every time that “ping” sound would occur. I think part of “removing distractions” involved establishing routine to some degree.
3. Blog
I’ve taken the first step here with reviving my fathir.com blog. My belief is that, while you can learn a lot from reading from other blogs, you’ll learn 10x that by writing posts yourself. The process of thinking through a topic enough to write about it is far more valuable than just reading about that same topic. Any time you can “teach” others, you’ll end up growing as a developer by leaps and bounds. This has been my experience throughout my entire career, and I do love teaching others.
4. Learn a New Technology Each Month
For me, this is something that without questions comes out when i see something. The problem is that there are just so many things I want to really learn well and I need some focus or I won’t learn enough of any of them.
5. Read and Write
the best thing you can do to be a better programmer is read. Not reading books, but reading other people’s code. I’ll take that one a step further. Not only does reading other people’s code help you become a better programmer, but getting involved in writing the code as well will take you even further.
Well, there you go. My thoughts on ways to improve myself as a developer. Wish me luck and hope you’ll find this helpful.
