I am old and already stupid, and everything is ahead of you, dear programmer. But let me give you one piece of advice that will surely help in your career - if, of course, you plan to remain a programmer.
Tips like “write beautiful code”, “comment well on your improvements”, “learn modern frameworks” are very useful, but, alas, secondary. They follow the trailer to the main quality of a programmer, which must be developed in oneself.
This is the main quality: an inquisitive mind.
An inquisitive mind is not so much a skill as a desire to understand an unfamiliar environment, whether it is a new technology, a new project, or new features of the PL.
An inquisitive mind is not an innate, but quite an acquired quality. Before working as a programmer, for example, I never had one.
In relation to our work, an inquisitive mind is often a desire to figure out why it, the bastard, does not work. Regardless of who wrote this code - you or someone else.
If you look at any task that you or your colleagues solve, then in a simplified way it looks like this: understand the problem, find a place for edits, make edits.
Actually programming begins only at the end of the chain, and the main part is one continuous exercise for the inquisitiveness of the mind. Both the final quality of the solution and the speed of its creation do not depend on your ability to write code, but on your desire to quickly understand and find where this fucking code should be screwed.
How to develop an inquisitive mind? Nothing complicated. I came up with a simple strategy many years ago:
So that the boys were not ashamed to show.
If your decision is not ashamed to show the boys, then it is excellent. If you delve into the problem until it stops, and you are not ashamed to tell the boys about it, then you are handsome.
Just do not turn this wording into the motto of the club of anonymous alcoholics. If you didn’t understand a damn thing, or wrote shitty code, gave up halfway, hung out snot and arranged an emotional striptease like “I’m so dumb, and I’m not afraid to admit it!”, Exposing your worthlessness and expecting to be pitied - you, alas , not a fucking programmer.
Here's an example for you. Recently, one trainee was tinkering with a problem in a rather complex mechanism - both technically and methodically. Digging, as I understand it, the whole day. Mostly by myself, but asked for help from colleagues. One of the experienced ones advised him to go into the debugger. In the evening, the trainee crawled up to me.
To be honest, I thought that the intern was looking in the wrong place and seeing the wrong thing, and I would have to dig from the very beginning. The crown pressed, in short. But it turned out that the trainee is one step away from the solution. Actually, I helped him to take this step. But that's not the point.
The main thing is that the trainee showed an inquisitive mind - a real one. Do you know how to distinguish real inquisitiveness? It's very simple - when a beginner finds, or almost finds a solution, moving the hell, understand which way, with a tambourine and dancing, does not give up, does not lay down with his paws up, even if he is ridiculous to everyone around, and "experts" will teach him advice like "teach mat.chast" or "look in the debugger".
Despite the very low efficiency of solving the problem in the above example, the boys are not ashamed to show the path traveled by the trainee. In our old days, only such people survived - because there were no specialists, all technologies were unfamiliar to absolutely everyone, and only the inquisitiveness of the mind could save.
Inquisitiveness of mind is equally common among beginners and grandfathers. Gray hair, a bunch of certificates, many years of experience - not at all an indicator of an inquisitive mind. I personally know several programmers with years of experience who give in to every challenge. All they can do is write code according to the TK, where everything is chewed up, laid out on the shelves, right down to the names of tables and variables.
So, gentlemen, interns and newcomers: your chances are the same as those of the old-timers. Do not look that the old uncle has a lot of experience and certificates - the inquisitiveness of the mind does not depend on this.
Whatever you do, remember - do it so that the boys are not ashamed to show it. Samurai taught this: if you write a letter, consider that the recipient will hang it on the wall. From this and the outcome.
The strategy “so that the boys are not ashamed to show” is very simple and easy to apply at any time. Stop even now, even in an hour, even in a year, and answer - what you have done, is it not a shame to show the boys? Are you ashamed to show the boys how you tried and looked for a solution? Isn't it embarrassing to show the boys how you strive every day to improve your efficiency?
Yes, and do not forget what kind of boys we are talking about. This is not your desk mate, not your manager, not your client. This is the whole world of programmers.
Source: habr.com