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

Congrats on the job!

First day you aren't going to be doing any coding.

You are likely to be doing a lot of admin nonsense, getting your dev environment set up and learning how their source control works / is structured.

After that you will be told to pull something from source control and will probably spend next couple of weeks familiarising yourself with the particular code base you are going to be working on. Don't treat this as an easy slacking off period. Take it seriously. If you are going into a code bases in the 100K+, 1M LOC size then this is a fairly hefty task on it's own to try and understand the architecture / structure.

Ideally they will pair you with someone senior for a few weeks if you are a junior developer.

Do you know what source control they use? If so it's worth getting to know it before you start.

If you are a junior developer, develop a thick skin, you will likely get lots and lots of comments on your code and potentialy a lot of them negative. This is fine, this is expected. Learn from it. Don't end up in your feelings or take it personally.

Be prepared to ask lots of questions, again if you are a junior developer this is totally expected.

What would be nice is to get included in code reviews from the start, look at the comments on other peoples code reviews and learn from them! This will help you pick up the expected style as well, if they have one (and it's not enforced by some auto-formatting).

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 evolving.

Read the error and understand it. Don't click blindly "ok" or "close" on error messages, they might contain essential clues that are too easily dismissed. Error messages are often done poorly but are also one of the main tools we have.

Don't overdo it. It's soooo easy to burn out, be conscious of your health.

Have a great first day!

Don't get stuck on a problem for too long. Ask for help. On the other hand, don't immediately ask for help but try to figure it out by yourself first.

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.