These 5 Coding Habits Separate a Good Developer from a Great One

Over the years,working across different teams, I've noticed that great developers—beyond mastering frameworks and languages—have these habits ingrained in their DNA:

1. 🧠 Thinking 'Why' Before 'How' They take the time to understand why a feature is being built before writing a single line of code. This understanding profoundly influences the architecture and technical choices.
2. 📚 Documenting as Part of the Coding Process Not just for others, but for their "future self"! A simple comment, a clear README, or API docs can save the entire team hours of frustration.
3. 🔍Intentional Code Reviews When reviewing others' code, they're not just looking for bugs. They're looking for clarity, simplicity, and cohesion with the overall architecture. Their critique is constructive, never personal.
4. ⏱️ Time-Blocking for Refactoring They know the first solution isn't always the best one. They proactively block time in their calendar for refactoring and cleaning up code. It's an investment, not a waste of time.
5. 🎯 Testing for Failure, Not Just Success Their unit tests don't just cover the happy path; they cover edge cases and failure states. They make it a non-negotiable habit.

What do you think? Which of these habits is the hardest to develop? Or what other habit would you add to this list? 👇

Comments

[Emilio Acevedo]

Great list. These habits are precisely what separates simply writing code from building software professionally and sustainably.

In my opinion, the hardest habit to develop, especially early in a career, is the first one: 🧠 Thinking 'Why' Before 'How'.

It requires confidence and an ownership mindset to push beyond the assigned ticket, question the requirements, and ensure you're solving the right business problem. It's the leap from being an implementer to being a problem-solver.

If I were to add a sixth habit to your list, it would be one I've consistently seen in the most effective engineers I've worked with:

⚙️ Having "Operational Empathy" (A Production-First Mindset).

A great developer doesn't just write code for the next developer who will read it; they write code for the operations engineer or SRE who will be on-call at 3 AM when something breaks.

This translates into concrete actions during development:

• Structured, contextual logging, not just generic messages.
• Clear metrics that expose the health and performance of the feature.
• Designing for resilience: What happens if this external service is down? Does the system degrade gracefully or collapse?

In the world of mission-critical systems, where I've spent most of my career, this mindset isn't a luxury—it's the foundation upon which reliability is built.

Thanks for starting this excellent discussion.

[Pascal CESCATO]

Thinking why before how seems to be the harder one. Just wrote a post about it (not yet published). And time-blocking for refactoring. Next version coming soon… you know.

[ak0047]

Thank you for sharing this article!
I'll keep these in mind.