I love this time of the year, regardless of if you're in tech or not people love to reflect on what happened during the previous year along with setting goals for the new year. For developers, this is also the time of the year where blog posts and Twitter feeds are full of the top programming languages of the year, along with what developers should know for the upcoming year.
Although these articles can be fun, I always make a point to remind developers not to chase new languages based on reactions from these articles. That's because when it comes to learning a new programming language or skill I always believe that it depends on many things including the following:
- Are you employed as a developer?
- Are you looking for a new position?
- What technology does your dream company use?
- What service do you want to build with code?
- What do you already know?
If we zoom out for a second, regardless of a particular programming language, you want to look at how you can become more efficient and increase productivity as a developer. How can we do this? Well, automation and CI/CD pipelines can be a great start for separating yourself from other junior developers. Also learning how to use container technologies and learning how to better structure your code, will always be evergreen skill sets that will keep you in demand for this year and for years to come. It also doesn't hurt to step away from your code and revisit different design patterns and ask yourself how can I improve this existing code?
In 2021 and every year after we want to improve our communication skills. With fellow developers on our team, end-users, and computers, we want to communicate clearly and concisely.
We can even improve on simple things like how we reach out for a particular question Should you email, chat, or call the needed person? Making the best decision for small choices like this can show that you know your team members well. This also shows that you are aware of how to minimize distractions along with knowing how to work well with your team by choosing the best way to get your question or problem solved. This is also important because on most teams there will be different levels of demand for each person. The way you reach out to person A might not be the way you reach out to person B.
For the new year, we all should set goals and aim to become better creators and maintainers of our code. As developers, we will learn every day for as long as we are in the field and enjoy the process. Regardless of our developer experience, we all should ask ourselves one question.
How can we become more efficient as developers?
Happy New Year!
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Top comments (1)
Agreed goal setting should be an essential area for developers. It is the best way to motivate and gauge progress.