I've written something about becoming a better programmer here https://medium.com/@hadalin/how-to-become-a-better-programme...
Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
11–20 of 460 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#12Read other people's code.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#13Learn to be useful to the organisation where you're working. Don't just be about upping your own skills and stuff. Being valuable to the person who's employing you is what makes your progress in your career. Learn to be a professional. Basic things like showing up on time, being a good communicator etc.
>Being valuable to the person who's employing you is what makes your progress in your career.
More importantly learn how to be recognized as valuable. It's better to appear valuable without actually being valuable than being valuable but not recognized, and often you don't even have a good idea what's valuable in the bigger picture on your own so accepting others valuation can help you from being stuck in your bubble.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#14Read the clean code book by Rob Martin and the head first design patterns book. Both are musts for software engineers and Amazon top sellers for developers. Other than that be like a sponge and learn transferable skills in one or two mainstream languages, you can't go wrong with Java, c#, sql and angular.
Do read those books, but don't take them as gospel, and don't be afraid to use your own judgement.
Both have some flaws and highly subjective advice in them, and if something doesn't seem to add up, it's very possible that there's a better way. Try things out and see how they fit.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#15Don't chase money, only focus on doing hard things that scare you at first (think: at the limit of what you're capable of), then change when you're done learning. Iterate for > 10 years.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#16Always work with people smarter than you. Ethics are important. Don't stop trying to improve. There is money to be made in every IT area, follow what you like and you wont be poor or unhappy. Respect others' work no matter how crappy, specially open source/free work.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#17Good enough is better than perfect. It is also way better than 'not yet done'. Always have targets in mind. Even green field explorative projects should have targets. Good engineers ship.
Abstraction and encapsulation is overrated. Premature generalization is the root of all evil.
Knowledge is no substitute for experience.
You cannot google what you do not know it exists.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#18Say "yes" to new challenges, even if you think they are over your head. Everybody feels a bit of imposter syndrome, so don't let yours stop you.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#19Don't say no to work just because it is not using the stack/vertical that you want to be in. Rejecting offers and jobs just because it is not in your preferred tech stack/department/vertical is the worst thing you can do for your career. I learnt this the hard way. Make sure you don't.
Re: Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer?
#20Don't be scared of going into reading source code of libraries/frameworks you are using to understand how things work.
The code will often be simpler than you think and allow you have a better, deeper understanding of how things work and empower you incredibly.