DEV Community

Discussion on: Transformative "Aha!" Moments: How Did They Change Your Coding Approach?

Collapse
 
ashleyjsheridan profile image
Ashley Sheridan

I've had a few of these moments in my career.

My first was being introduced to MVC frameworks. It was a freelance gig I picked up many years ago. It introduced me to many concepts I had heard about, solidified some ideas I had already had, and generally opened my eyes to a better way to structure a lot of my backend code. Gone were my days of including a bunch of utility functions, most of which I didn't use.

The second moment came when I began using git for the first time. Up until then, I'd been using SVN, and working in a team was difficult at times. Using git, my whole approach to coding changed, I was suddenly free to commit my mistakes and fix conflicts when I wanted without affecting others. I was less afraid of breaking things, so I would work more efficiently.

Another moment came when I started to learn C#/.Net. This had a little more structure and was more strict than other languages I was used to. What I learned here I was able to apply to other languages and frameworks. I found that I was writing better code in multiple languages because of what I'd learned. Now, as a manager, I encourage developers to pick up a couple of languages at least, just to help them broaden their experience with their first, core language.