Just some advice for new devs in 2025

Jules Libert — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 22:01:40 +0000

Here's a response to a former colleague who’s earlier in their career than I am and asked me for advice about being a dev in 2025. It got me thinking, especially in the age of AI. It's really raw, not SEO-friendly at all, but if someone stumbles across this, hopefully it helps.

I took some time to give you something honest and useful, no bullshit. I believe that if you seriously apply these things, you’ll grow fast and strong as a dev:

Side projects: This is key. What you build outside of work reflects your real motivation. It’s where you can experiment, mess up, learn, and grow freely.
Focus on real user use cases. In an AI-driven world, understanding real user needs is what makes you valuable. That’s the human side machines can’t replace.
Learn design patterns. They help you write better code and collaborate more effectively. Since you're focused on web dev, a great place to start: https://www.patterns.dev/
Focus on problem-solving skills. That’s more important than just knowing syntax. Read about mental models and cognitive biases. These will level up how you think and debug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_solving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

This is a masterpiece: https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-useful-936f1cc405d

Don’t overuse AI. Don’t rely on it to do what you don’t understand. Use it to go faster at what you already can do, use it to learn. It’s a tool, not a shortcut for learning.
Know yourself technically. Map out what you already know, and what you need to learn. This helps build direction and clarity. A resource I wish had existed when I started: https://roadmap.sh/
Learn the fundamentals. Really understand how the web works. Learn clean code principles. Stick to basics like KISS, DRY, YAGNI.
Code is not the most important thing. What matters is the outcome. Testing is a big thing, but also learn to prioritize impact over perfection. Apply Occam’s Razor and the Pareto principle: go simple, go effective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
Invest in good communication. It’s the one skill that will still matter when LLMs write most of the code. The people who communicate best with others (and with LLMs) will stand out.
Do code reviews. Read other people’s code. If you can, contribute to open source. Not doing more open source earlier in my career is something I regret.
Stay curious. Always keep learning. Tech evolves fast, if you love what you do and have « deliberate practice » https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/deliberate-practice#:~:text=Deliberate%20practice%20is%20defined%20as,often%20performed%20without%20immediate%20reward -> You will stand out
Be coachable. When you get constructive feedback, use it. Don’t defend your ego. Progress depends on your ability to take it in and grow from it. Im saying that because when I started I was not always listening to feedbacks (maybe due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect )
Stay humble. You’ll never know everything. The more years I spend in this field, the more I realize how little I know.
This is everything I wish someone had clearly told me when I was starting out. If anything here resonates, feel free to reach out ! And feel free to share these bullet points to anyone as well :)

Take care ! Jules

Productivity tip: Remapping caps lock to hyper key

Jules Libert — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 13:27:50 +0000

Here's a tip that has been a huge time-saver for me on MacOS. I only discovered it recently, but it's generally well-known among self-respecting Vim developers: remapping the Caps Lock ⇪ key.

What ?

Caps Lock ⇪ key is rarely used, so why not repurpose it?

The idea is to remap Caps Lock ⇪ to hyper key, meaning a key combination like cmd+option+ctrl+shift on Mac.

Why ?

This combination is generally never used by apps because it's too complex for users. But by mapping it to hyper key, we gain access to an entirely new layer of shortcuts.

By combining the ease of assigning shortcuts to a variety of commands with Raycast, I can now access my most-used apps super quickly.

Use cases

When I started, I've created over 20 shortcuts in less than an hour. Thanks to some mnemonic devices, there's no need to memorize them. Adopted in a flash !

I feel like I have superpowers now, accessing everything I need with just a few keystrokes.

CAPSLOCK + A Web browser (Arc)
CAPSLOCK + K Akiflow
CAPSLOCK + B Beeper
CAPSLOCK + C Visual Studio Code
CAPSLOCK + P Recent Projects (from VSCode)
CAPSLOCK + F Figma
CAPSLOCK + M Mail (Mimestream)
CAPSLOCK + N Notion
CAPSLOCK + , See my Schedule
CAPSLOCK + T Terminal
CAPSLOCK + L Linear
CAPSLOCK + V Clipboard History
CAPSLOCK + G GitHub
CAPSLOCK + W Kill a process
CAPSLOCK + S File Search by Raycast
CAPSLOCK + I Set Input audio device
CAPSLOCK + O Set Output audio device
CAPSLOCK + R Record my voice and paste transcription with superwhisper
CAPSLOCK + = Make current Window larger
CAPSLOCK + - Make current Window smaller
CAPSLOCK + ←/→/↓/↑ Move the active tab to a given direction

Inside VSCode:

CAPS + D Find previous occurrence (inverse of cmd+D)
CAPS + Enter Smart Select from the cursor
Shift + Enter Move current cursor to Smart Select

How ?

edit: You can now do that natively inside Raycast ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UaOst_nqu8

To remap Caps Lock, I use Hyperkey, which is free and made by Ryan Hanson. There might be other similar tools for Mac or Windows.

To install, download it directly from their site or use

brew install --cask hyperkey

It's a small change with a big impact for me. Give it a try !

Hope it helps,
Jules