7+ Habits that Made Me a Better Software Engineer
7+ habits that got me a job at Google, a startup, and made me a co-founder
1. Reading programming books
Reading books on programming languages, project architecture, best practices, and different technologies and theories helped me learn and improve my skills.
“For the best return on your money, pour your purse into your head.” ― Benjamin Franklin
2. Watching tutorials
Tutorials help you understand how technologies work together to build a full program/application and how to do something new.
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” ― Pablo Picasso
3. Building something every day
Start by building along with tutorials/classes and work up to building your own ideas.
Wes Bos’ JavaScript30 course of 30 small projects in 30 days is a great place to start.
“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” — Benjamin Franklin
4. Launching my own projects
There are many details you need to figure out to build your own application.
Deploying your own project will help you gain experience to improve your skills.
I built Twos, 7 Levels Deep, Aware, and Müse.
“Little things make big things happen.” — John Wooden
5. Preparing for interviews
A programming job can be a path to learn and grow as a developer.
In order to get a good job, you need to prepare with the fundamental programming concepts and problem-solving skills.
I recommend reading “cracking the coding interview” and practicing coding tests online at LeetCode.
6. Writing pseudo code before you start coding
It can be challenging to think through all the different edge cases and issues when you start building.
Take a few minutes to plan your code before you dive into it.
“An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing.” — Dale Carnegie.
7. Using better naming conventions
Nothing is worse than going back to improve a feature or fix a bug and not being able to understand what you wrote.
They say half of the battle is naming your variables and functions.
Use longer more descriptive names and your future self will thank you.
8. Using Twos
With everything you’re learning, you’ll want to have a way to remember it all.
Twos is an app and website to simply remember *things*.
I use it for daily tasks, making lists, planning out code, setting goals, and much more.
These 7+ habits helped me get a job at Qualcomm, a tech startup in San Francisco, my dream job at Google, and found my own company.
I wish you nothing but success on your software journey. I hope these habits help you accomplish your goals.
#SharedFromTwos ✌️
Use Twos: https://www.TwosApp.com
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