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Things a developer MUST DO

Time to Focus!


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Tealfeed Guest Blog

3 years ago | 4 min read

Things a developer MUST DO

In this article, I will talk about what I have opted for to improve my technical knowledge. It real makes me feel good about being a developer.

Almost every developer is working from home nowadays and getting benefits of more family time, work-time flexibility and pursuing hobbies as well. A developer should take due advantage of this situation and start focussing on make one-self technically more sound.

Open source contribution

There is no developer in the world who has not used some open source library in his career atleast once. We tend to depend a lot on these in our everyday coding lives. Take out 3–4 hours for this on weekends. This is the time to give back to that open source community. IT might sound like a big thing but trust me, there are numerous ways to do that.

  • Go ahead and work on the features in the open source library you have used and always thought if it could support those features.
  • Create open source library (Package) for any feature or code that you have made and will be helpful to others. Make sure you have the rights to that.
  • Go to Top Rated open source libraries on Github for your domain and interest. Start working on the issues mentioned there and create pull requests for fixes.

StackOverFlow.com

Start questioning and answering on stackoverflow. There are numerous questions asked on multiple domains almost every second. Take half an hour from you everyday schedule and start working around them. You will eventually feel good about yourself and also there is a point and badge system which will track your growth. Stackoverflow profile is also great to showcase to recruiters.

Read Blogs

I know everything, said no developer in the universe. There is always scope of improvement, there is always new things to learn. Start reading blogs and technical posts to improve your knowledge and approaches other people in the world are using. Take out half an hour everyday to go ahead and read blogs. I do this on medium everyday first thing in the morning.

Write Blogs

I know it might feel like writing is a tough job. I can understand that since I used to think that too but this is my fourth article this year. Writing takes a lot of patience and research as well but its not rocket science. You just need to be on point and explanatory enough for reader to understand. It might take longer in the beginning but I am sure determination will get you there.

This will make you learn writing as well as how to share your learnings and knowledge to outside world. Start preparing through the week by gathering all the required materials, finish off by the weekend and voila, Publish!

Attentive to E-mails

I know developers hate to see e-mails and hate even more to reply to those big e-mail with documentation and what not. But, believe it or not e-mail communication is a vital part of any organisation for daily updates. I have made it a habit of checking and replying to all e-mails first thing in the morning and before I go to sleep.

There might be someone who is blocked because of your no response and you might be working on something of which approach is changed or is not needed anymore at all.

DO NOT ignore your e-mail notifications, go ahead and read them and reply if needed. Even an acknowledgement or noted e-mail is important. Another great thing in e-mails is follow up. Just send “Following up” or “Gentle Reminder” to all your e-mails waiting for an answer. It is a polite and effective way to poke 😁.

Coding Challenges

Believe me when I say this, It is important to keep your brain-trained at all times. Doing same style of coding on same kind of architecture, things might get monotonous sometimes and when there is a new challenge or problem, your brain might not work at a pace it used to be. Take out time for doing coding challenges on weekends or even weekdays if you can take out the time.

These will brush up your skills and will also help you in case you are looking for a job change after lockdown ends or even during lockdown. HackerEarth, CodeChef, GeekForGeeks, Techgig, there are just too many of them.

Work on your Idea

There might be something that you always thought of creating but could never get the time to bring it to life. Now, you have it. Do your R&D, talk to your fellow developers about the idea. Take their inputs and start by creating a wireframe. It does not matter, whether its something big or small but what matters is It is going to be your baby and you will have nourish it.

It gives a very proud feeling if you are able to create even a tiny feature that you always wanted. Think about it now!

It is never too late to start something new.

In the end I just want to say that these are really essential parts of developer and we might be doing one or two but if we make it a habit and make them a part of our everyday life. Life is going to become much better. Share your everyday schedule and things to include to become a better developer in the comments below.

This article was originally published by Swati wadhera on medium.

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