Andrew Smith

Posted on Oct 8, 2017

Quickfire Discussion: I'm a Junior Developer, tell me your top 3 pieces of advice.

#juniordeveloper #advice #discuss #intern

What did you wish you knew when you were a Junior Developer?

What would you tell current Junior Developers?

etc

Latest comments (22)

Everton Agner • Oct 15 '17

Debug your code

I've taught basic and intermediate programming to students and co-workers, and one recurring behavior is that people often forget the debugger is there to help. Be careful with endless trials and errors when troubleshooting bugs in your code, but instead take some time, debug it and understand the flow it's taking and where are the gaps.

Is programming a job or a career for you?

It will take a while for you to figure this out, but will help you realize where do you want/need to put your focus on. If you really enjoy and want to improve your programming skills, do not rely solely on what your job has to offer you challenge-wise. Study and practice on your own, keep reading about what are the current trends and why, and if you're up to, build some side projects.

Refactor always

On the first few years of your career, you will often join teams that are rebuilding something, often a redesign of an old, legacy system. Your new system is cool and shiny, and everyone loves it. After a while, in exchange of productivity, people might start taking shortcuts to deliver things faster; New members might be assigned tasks which they have no idea where to start and will deliver code outside your standards; Also, if you have plenty of unit tests, which are there to help, you might be intimidated when you think about refactoring something that's there for a while, and heavily tested: if you refactor that, you'll have to review/rewrite so many tests! After a while - usually after the team changed so much it has no faces from the original team, they realize that - ta-da! - they got a new legacy system, and the cycle repeats. To an extent, much of this could've been avoided if the team was committed to quality and were not afraid of refactoring code. Well-written, flexible and secure code can accommodate design changes and be submitted to new business needs.

K • Oct 14 '17

Try things out standalone before integrate them in an existing code base.

Github is more important than Stackoverflow, be because the code always tells the truth.

Don't sweat that you take longer to learn than others, there will always be people who start learning later than you.

tyoc213 • Oct 13 '17

Read other people code (there are a lot of code out there this days) read specially in the areas that you like.

Have a purpose to learn something, like do a usefull app, or make a lib or something.

Frank Carr • Oct 13 '17

I've been in this career for 30 years. I've done poorly with my #1 suggestion although I'm improving, OK with #2 and I've done pretty well with #3.

(1) Healthy eating and exercise habits - It's easy to develop a "programmer gut". Make sure you eat right and in moderation and take time away from the screen to exercise.

(2) Learn to tolerate BS. Don't let it rattle you when the project you just spent 6 months on is canceled, your company shuts down or other unfortunate events happen. Also, managers, other developers and project sponsors can be total jerks at times. Learn to roll with the punches because there always will be a punches, usually a lot of them. Have an exit strategy at all times just in case things go bad.

(3) Always Be Coding. Programming requires constant learning and the best way to learn is to find something new to code. Don't let yourself stagnate in a position or in a programming language.

Er Galvão Abbott • Oct 13 '17

Have discipline;
Read the Documentation;
Forget tools, patterns, languages and frameworks: They are always changing. Focus more on concepts. Knowing the concepts and theories (and putting in practice, of course) changes EVERYTHING.

Ben Hosking • Oct 13 '17

Learn SOLID Principles and read The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers by Robert C. Martin
Always focus on improving. Improve you knowledge, skills, experience, soft skills. The more you learn, the more you earn #HoskWisdom
You are responsible for your career. You must drive it and know where you are going. Know what your dream job is, know what your next role is and start learning heading in that direction.

Longer version can be found on my blog for Dynamics devepers
crmbusiness.wordpress.com/2017/09/...

Isaac Lyman • Oct 13 '17

Just this: read voraciously. Read about everything. Read whatever you can find. Read on the job. Read at home. Read waaayyyyy more than you need to in order to solve a given problem. Read until you know the right way to do the thing. Your market value will rise exponentially.

Ask your company to buy you some books. I always recommend Code Complete, but also get some books on the languages or technologies you're using.

If your company won't buy you books or doesn't let you spend a few hours on the clock every week reading in order to sharpen your skills, quit. Per hour, working increases your value by fractions of a cent; reading increases your value by dollars.

Jose Gonzalez • Oct 13 '17 • Edited

1. Your real job

Brandon Savage

@brandonsavage

Your job as a software engineer is not to write code.

Your job is to solve problems.

Sometimes you solve problems with code.

15:11 PM - 04 Oct 2017

579971

2. A business (aka workplace)

Original tweet: twitter.com/JoseGonz321/status/917...

3. Learn personal finance

Don't impress yourself with how much you earn, impress yourself with how much you keep.
Frugality is king whether you are making $50K or $100k+
As you become more senior, the money will be there. But the salary ceiling is very real. Find out what you want to do: (consulting, service, product?) as you progress in your adventure.
Invest