When you’re new to software developer, you have so much to learn. IDE’s, architecture, design patterns, algorithm perhaps. It got me thinking about the less glamorous parts of the job, that are vital to the one thing that matters..
If software is not in prod, it’s not making money!
If you’re solving the wrong problem, then you’re wasting money
With that in mind, here’s a few things that spring to mind that extend beyond just smashing out your code with your headphones in
- You need to consider data in your release planning. You might need to migrate it along with your code. You definitely need it to validate your requirements are worth doing in the first place!
- Face to face communication is better than everything else. I appreciate Slack as a tool but it stops the proper discussions and makes people lazy imo. People still make software so go over and talk to people when you’re co-located.
- You can be the best coder in the world but you’re not effective if you’re solving the wrong problems and just wanting to play with shiny new toys.
- Think about how you log things. It’s really useful to think of the ‘use case’ you’re carrying out and provide an audit from beginning to end of that use case. Whoever has to support it in prod will thank you.
- If you’re looking at technology to evaluate for your company, what’s the migration strategy from older versions? Are there any horror stories on popular programming forums about that? Maybe you should think twice if so.