Advice to less experienced developers

Came across this blog post today from Mike Gunderloy offering some good advice to less experienced developers.

4 Likes

Thanks for sharing! My favourite quote from the blog post:

Any honest developer is still learning

2 Likes

I also liked the follow up to that, because it’s so true:

Any developer who tells you they know exactly how you should tackle every problem is lying. If they don’t know they’re lying, that’s even worse.

That whole post is filled with gems. Others I liked:

Figuring out things on your own is good, but it’s OK to ask for help.

No matter how new you are in the field, there is absolutely no excuse for a potential employer to treat you badly. Keep in mind that they way they act during the interview tells you something about the work environment, and you’re interviewing them as much as they’re interviewing you.

Job listings routinely lie about what’s “required” because the people writing them don’t know what the job really requires. Rule of thumb: if you hit 75% of the bullet points, go ahead and put a resume in. The worst that can happen is they’ll tell you you’re not a good fit. But be honest about what you really know!

1 Like

Great read. My key takeaway is this bit:

Figure out what type of code you like to write, and write more of it. “Full-stack developer” is increasingly a myth.

Great piece of advice when I’ve heard so many say the complete opposite.

2 Likes

That’s a great takeaway. It pays to know a lot about one particular thing (the code you like to write) and a little about the rest (you can’t ignore everything else, but you shouldn’t try to master it all either).

Good podcast episode / blog on the things we tell ourselves that hold us back and a small deep dive into how this often happens in coding when you are still ‘junior’.

https://www.growthmindsetpodcast.com/blog/learned-helplessness

1 Like

Great read! Thank you

1 Like