*header pic by Shen Comix
Remember when you were a junior dev and you didn't know how to progress faster, what productivity tools and appoaches to use, what kind of mindset you need to adopt. What tips and tools would you give to a younger self? What important lessons did you learn as a dev?
Please, share in the comments!
I'll pick some of your answers for my next article.
Top comments (47)
git log -p
), but about WHY you did it. About the context of the change. Reference tickets. Summarize your analysis. This will tremendously help your future self, your new team mate or the person fixing a bug to understand the code and what happened to it over time.Well said bud!
Have a wonderful way up to the top, you are already on the right track!
Cheers, peace and love!
I will add, commit messages should link back to actual issue numbers in your Kanban board such that documentation, issues, bugs can be traced to code commits at all times.
This helps with on-boarding, new bug resolution, old bug resolutions, code understanding, and code documentation in general.
Hope it helps! :)
Hey Jane, Nice tips!.
Regarding the journaling part, recently i also started using Notion, Please share the notion template structure if you can.
Thanks, Pradeep!
Sure! You should be able to dublicate it to your account: painted-teller-bf3.notion.site/Hab...
Never rush to code. Something my seniors taught me, plan first. Like really plan it in your head, writing the final thing down takes very little time. Figuring all of it out, that is what takes skill and patience
I personally can't completely agree with this but maybe I'm different with that topic.
I love the code first approach.
For instance for planning an Api it is incredible useful to me to write the code down how you will eventually use the api even though it does not exist yet.
It helps me understanding how the interfaces will be designed.
Also helps me in the frontend how components can be designed if I start writing the top component and how it will use the not yet existing sub components.
Nevertheless I still use the whiteboard for umls and other stuff.
This is so true!! When I first started out, I used to be so excited to jump into the code and get lost in it. Dozens of bugs later, I could say I'm a bit more wise
Haha. Happens to all of us.
To my previous self:
"
You will read more code than you will create code.
If you don't understand something, don't be ashamed.
Communicate your problems with your manager.
Take care of your health! That's the most important thing I can say!
Research the company you will be working for and understand that a 50% recommendation is bad.
Understand that many people in a company use MS Excel.
Understand that bureaucracy is an essential part of the job.
You will attend many meetings, so you will learn how to communicate and understand the tools the company offers for communication (Skype, Teams, Zoom, etc.).
IT department is generally slow, learn to be patient.
learn Git.
Understand Scrum.
Learn Confluence.
Learn how to create batch files to make your work easier.
Learn Bitbucket.
Understand tickets.
Your colleagues are not like your friends or family.
Study the organization chart of the company.
Create a code journal.
Document important events.
Take out legal protection insurance.
You did great for doing all of the above!
Sincerely
Me
"
Very important:
Important:
Estimate !== Deadline can't be stressed enough!
Awful to see what an estimate which you state yourself to others does to your psyche.
I love your tips, but the problem is not coding for 14 hours, the thing is what did you achieve in that time
As they say, it's not the hours you put in, it's what you put in the hours.
I'm still junior dev so I don't have much productivity tips to give.
But I have to share something is that as a junior dev
starting sharing knowledge with others in form of article/short explanatory video in other words "learning and building in public" .
If you are sharing knowledge in form of article it will help others definitely but it will also make Documentation/writing skills of ourselves better.
Try doing open source contribution.
It will help you get experience by working on real world and widely used software/project. And even help you to learn huge codebase.
And yes important thing
soft skills >> technical skills
Now a days developer jobs are moving remote so it becomes important having better collaboration and teamwork skills. Public speaking adds advantage .
And one more important thing don't just go on drinking coffee to code for a long time instead drink more water that too helps.
And as a junior dev use Twitter you will definitely learn a lot from professional devs through there tweets/threads and twitter spaces.
I don't use twitter but can you suggest some professionals which you think I can learn from?
There are so many.
Few of them are here on Devto too.
Start with Twitter and select the topics related to tech you will find many amazing professional.
There is whole big community of tech on twitter called as TechTwitter.
I don't know if I would call that a "productivity tip", but even then, saying of your own content that it "inspires everyone in the world" does come across as rather arrogant. Almost 3 million views is no small number, but hardly even close to "everyone in the world".
"I shared my story and it inspires everyone in the world to this day."
🤣🤣🤣
the first point hits real hard! so true tho!!
Please, could you elaborate a bit the second and third points? I believe I understand the second point but not the third one and I think I could be missing something helpful. Thank you!
By this I mostly mean automate your repetitive tasks; everything you do that can be automated. You know you're on the right track when you use regular expressions in your code editor at least once per day in a weekly average.
As in, choose the tool that may slow you down at first but will help you later on. To give a hyperbolic example: One may achieve more today if they use notepad instead of vim; but if it takes you a month to learn the basics of vim, the next month of increased productivity will negate the lost time of the first month, and beyond that it's all saved time.
Thank you! Very helpful information
Write less code. Once you start writing it - everything slows down / and your perspective gets boxed in. Just write it on paper / or in comments - or draw a picture.
Talk with people about your idea with someone else and see if you can get another way to look at it and maybe learn something. Learn in public.
Create small prototypes and show them to humans on real devices. They'll notice things you didn't and then you can incorporate those things.
Use a time timer to time-box and also to force yourself not to work.
Stop pretending you can multitask.
Actually know how to use your computer well. It's your main tool.
Sleep. Working "hard" is not working smart.
Have a social life. Otherwise, what's the point?
If you watch a tutorial, don't code along. Just take notes on the concepts
Stay out of the CMS for as long as possible, because that's the biggest bottleneck
Avoid anything that isn't absolutely necessary. Do you need that package, library, buildtool, future-tech-debt-machine? Do you need smartsheets, trello, monday, and more tasks to take up your time? Or would a simple README be even better?
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