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Ask HN: Advice for my first day as a developer tomorrow

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Re: Ask HN: Advice for my first day as a developer tomorrow

#11

Post by kostarelo »

loa_in_ wrote: post #5
duiker101 wrote: post #4

You will screw up at some point. It's ok. It happens, we all took a website offline or merged the wrong branch. It's part of the learning process. Learn from everyone, there are many different ways of doing everything, don't just follow blindly one person, observe what everyone is doing and choose whatever works for you. Be always open to improving, learning and becoming a better dev. This is a job that is ever evolv…

I remember my first big screw up, at my first start-up I worked at. I mounted production server webdir as an sftp mount remotely. Then I remember doing chown -R at some higher level directory locally thinking it surely won't affect NTFS remote system, but boy was I wrong. It caused a one whole day of downtime. Thankfully easy to fix once I figured it out. My boss couldn't live it down for a week or two, but eventuall…

Almost 7 years in since my first job as a developer and I did a 7k£ worth of damage at my current company after merging an enormous PR which among others, messed with the production DB. It was so huge none approved it but I got written confirmation from my manager to merge and "see what happens in production". :P Shit happens. It's never your fault, well, unless when it actually is.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for my first day as a developer tomorrow

#12

Post by muzani »

Do a little more than expected. That's where the magic happens. That's how you grow and improve. That's how you build connections, and get freelance work or meet that cool guy who starts an exciting startup, or get recommended for that job at whatever corporate you want to join.

Improve a little bit every day. Honestly this has given me the most returns. It doesn't have to be much at all - find a nicer IDE theme, memorize one shortcut, read up documentation on that command you use a lot but never understood.

Explore things that interest you, not necessarily the one that seems like the next career step. When you're young, your hacker instinct is probably more accurate than most of the data and buzzwords going around.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for my first day as a developer tomorrow

#13

Post by eanthy »

Your first job pretty much determines in what direction your career it's going to go. If you work with tech you like then good for you. If you don't make sure you move within a team that does because your next job will be just an upgrade of what you are doing now, and you better choose the right thing.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for my first day as a developer tomorrow

#14

Post by [deleted] »

diegoperini wrote: post #10

Don't forget to have fun! You probably like being a programmer, so don't let this job change that. Treat yourself well. Personalize your work tools to your liking as much as possible. Bring a cup you like to the office and use that. Be alert in case your chair is uncomfortable.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Advice for my first day as a developer tomorrow

#17

Post by olingern »

- Read some recent PR's on an area of the codebase you'll be in. See if you can come up with some questions if you can't figure out why something was done. It would impress me if someone came to me with great questions or was just interested in learning.

- Be aware of your time. Sometimes, devs can be pulled in many different directions that distract them from what matters.

- Learn and research your company's tools and practices, i.e. Github/Bitbucket, Trello/Asana, scrum/okr's, etc.

- Get your dev environment running. If there are bugs or issues in the documentation, see if you can make a PR and fix it for the next person.

edit: PR stands for "pull request." Adding, since I would not have known this just out of college.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for my first day as a developer tomorrow

#18

Post by codingdave »

eanthy wrote: post #13

Your first job pretty much determines in what direction your career it's going to go. If you work with tech you like then good for you. If you don't make sure you move within a team that does because your next job will be just an upgrade of what you are doing now, and you better choose the right thing.

> Your first job pretty much determines in what direction your career it's going to go.

This is untrue. Your first job shows you what all the variations in roles actually are in this industry. It isn't just coding. Do the work, take note of what everyone does. And if there is something that you like more than coding, try to learn that.

You have flexibility - nothing is set in stone. Many people change gears numerous times as their career progresses. Don't stress over it.

Re: Ask HN: Advice for my first day as a developer tomorrow

#20

Post by vjba »

duiker101 wrote: post #4

You will screw up at some point. It's ok. It happens, we all took a website offline or merged the wrong branch. It's part of the learning process. Learn from everyone, there are many different ways of doing everything, don't just follow blindly one person, observe what everyone is doing and choose whatever works for you. Be always open to improving, learning and becoming a better dev. This is a job that is ever evolv…

Thank you for your sound advice and wishes. Some of your "don't"s seem like traps I fall into easily. I'll be extra conscious of them now.
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