No matter what stage you are at in your career there is always something you can learn or improve on. In this article by Pavel Malos he advises on 5 ways to ensure you become a better coder and even if you don't code these are great tips. What would be your top tip to being successful in your career?
'Professional coder? It’s time to get serious about skills improvement and level up your game.
If you’re looking to fill your to-do-better list, let me share with you 5 actionable ways:
1. Learn more. Always be in the student mode
It’s 2017 and I see coders operating like it’s 2009. Technology changes fast. Don’t get left behind.
You can go to conferences, read blogs, magazines, social media and websites, watch tutorials or join a mailing list. Want more ideas? I compiled a list of 50 best resources when learning to code and most of them are free.
Consistency and never-ending improvement is the key to stay in the student mode. Be curious, ask questions and don’t assume you know best.
Technology changes fast. Don’t get left behind.
Frustrations abound when learning how to develop better but hopefully the tips above made you feel more confident in your quest to become a master at your craft.
2. Practice!
Asides from following tutorials, you should work on your own projects.
But how do I get started, you may ask.
I always tell people to find something they’re doing more than once a week and to try to automate it. Ignore if anyone else has solved the problem before, and just make a tool/utility for yourself that fixes a common issue in your life.
— Kasra Rahjerdi, Mobile Lead at Stack Overflow.
Like any other skill, it takes practice — deliberate practice, stepping outside of your comfort zone and learning the nuance and subtleties — that set apart great from good.”
— Derick Bailey, the creator of WatchMeCode.net.
Derick is a top 0.42% StackOverflow user, and has also contributed to open source frameworks such as has MarionetteJS and BackboneJS.
It’s OK to fail. Coding is all about failing and fixing things, and about learning how to do things better. If you don’t build things and work on areas that you know you are weak on, you’ll never get better.
If you ever need to receive advice on how to improve and what you’re not doing so well on, feel free to ask an experienced developer to help your get straightened up by either reviewing your code or walking you through concepts you are having trouble understanding.
3. Follow this tricky formula:
1) Write cool stuff you don’t totally understand
2) Break stuff horribly
3) Figure out why it is broken
4) Fix it well, and think about what else is going to go wrong with it
5) Repeat
Don’t be afraid to break stuff, but don’t cut corners to fix it either. Neatly format your code, and put a lot of comments on anything you write so when YOU look at it later you know where your mind was at the time.
4. Be patient
Mike stresses that beginners should give up on the assumption that one can become an excellent developer quickly.
But… what if you’re not even past the tutorial stages yet? What if you’re still banging your head against the wall and wondering perhaps you’re just not cut out for programming? Before you leap to conclusions, know that everyone has a different learning style. Author of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial, Michael Hartl, points out that beginners should try lots of different resources (books, videos, etc.) to see what ‘clicks’.
In fact, Craig Coffman, the CTO of Reserve, has personally learned through a lot of trial-and-error and by picking projects that were personal and interesting. However, since all the interesting challenges are big ones, he suggests beginners to start with biting off reasonably-sized pieces.
That way, when you lose interest or get stuck, you still have a feeling of progress and accomplishment.
5. Show Gratitude
A Harris Poll on behalf of University of Phoenix that surveyed over 1,000 U.S. adults who work full time in HR or senior management showed that 51% of managers who used public recognition and 54% of managers who used rewards to solicit ideas were better able to encourage innovation.
Saying “thank you” is good for your health and good for the bottom line, too. Acknowledging fundraisers’ work with donors led to a 50% increase in their productivity, according to Harvard Health.'
This article was written by Pavel Malos and posted originally onto Medium.com