Author: John Au-Yeung

Being a good developer is hard, but being a bad one is easy. There’re many ways to make ourselves a bad developer.

In this article, we’ll look at some ways that we can become a bad developer.

Assume There Are No Bugs in Our Code

Assuming that there are no bugs in our code is always a big mistake. It’s just impossible to have no bugs in our code unless the app it’s a very simple app.

Otherwise, we’re making a very bad assumption since it’s very hard to write any code.

Every line can do something that we may not expect. If we don’t think hard enough and take into account all the cases that something can go wrong, then something will go wrong.

Most apps are at least thousands of lines if they’re used by people in production and people are paying for it, so we better look at everything line and think of all the edge cases and risks that can arise from our code.

Computers are dumb. They just run the code that’s in our programs, so we shouldn’t assume that there’re no bugs since every line can go wrong and computers can’t read our minds.

Write Code Without Reasoning

Before we put code into a file, we should make sure that the code makes sense before we put it in.

We can’t just try random things and hope that something works. Doing that definitely makes us a bad developer since we’ll probably end up with something that doesn’t work.

Also, the code we put in must serve a purpose. Otherwise, the code is useless and they don’t help anyone.

Take Pleasure in Writing More Code

We shouldn’t write any more code than we need to. The desire to write more code should be stopped.

Writing useless code just makes our code more complex and long and annoys other people reading the code.

The more code there is the more mistakes that we make. Each extra line of code adds more risk for bugs and undesirable behavior.

Therefore, the more code there is, the more ways we can screw up. More code also adds more burden of testing, code reviews, and many more tasks that we can do less of if we have less code.

Writing Code for Machines Rather Than Humans

Writing code for machines will get us trouble eventually. Code with names that we don’t understand or badly formatted code will get us eventually.

No one including the write will understand it given enough time.

Another way to write code for machines is spaghetti code. Spaghetti code is just code that has messy workflows, branching, and whatever other ways we can think of to make a mess.

That’s just not acceptable by any means since they are impossible to change because of the mess that the code had turned to.

By writing very long functions and classes, we’re also writing code for machines. We don’t want that since again, only a machine can get it.

No human can read long functions and classes and understand it completely. Therefore, it’s one more thing that we should avoid.

Instead, we should look at the principles of Clean Code and write our code based on that. The first half of the book applies to any programming language, so focus on the first half.

Thinks Emotionally

Thinking emotionally definitely makes us a bad developer. We shouldn’t take constructive criticism personally.

They help us improve our code. Also, we shouldn’t let our egos get in the way of rational thinking. We should take useful suggestions and apply them if the way we did things were deficient.

Also, we shouldn’t just code by feeling. We should test our stuff so that we can be sure that stuff works the way that we expect them to.

Conclusion

There’re many ways to become a bad developer. We can assume that our code never has bugs.

Also, we can let our egos and feelings get in our way of rational thinking.

Furthermore, we can write code that machines can read with bad formatting and non-descriptive names.

Finally, we can just put code that’s useless or has no reason to be there.

To be a good programmer, we should follow some easy to adopt habits to keep our programming career long-lasting.

In this article, we’ll look at some of them and how to adopt them.

Know When to Stop

We can’t just keep writing code forever. We got to take breaks and deliver something eventually.

Therefore, we should know when to stop and consider our work to be done.

We got to step back and look at what we have critically. If it’s not good, then we’ll replace it with something good.

Also, we should add extra things that aren’t needed in our code. This way, we don’t do unnecessary work that’s not needed.

Investment in Knowledge

Investing in learning can never go wrong. Technologies are updated all the time, so we should always be learning things so that we’ll keep getting better and wiser.

This way, we’ll become better than the competition and we can get things done faster and better.

If we stick to our old ways, then we may be sticking to habits that may not produce the best result or be the most efficient way to do something.

Therefore, if we keep learning, then we’ll keep getting better and finding new ways to do things better and faster.

Also, old knowledge may get out of date and becomes useless, so we must also stay up to date for that reason.

Otherwise, we may end up being no help for anyone and that means no work for us.

Our Knowledge Portfolio

A knowledge portfolio is the assortment of knowledge that we’ve learned over time.

It’s like an investment portfolio, but instead of investing with money, we invest by spending time to learn things.

We got to invest regularly to see our knowledge grow. This should be made a habit.

Diversification is a key to success just like an investment portfolio. Never put our eggs in one basket since we don’t know when something will become useless.

This ensures that we maintain long term success.

We should hedge against risk by balancing our knowledge portfolio by investing in low-risk investments to mitigate the risk of high-risk, high-reward investments.

Now, there’s nothing that’s really risky with investing in learning knowledge as we do by investing our hard-earned money on our financial investment portfolios, but we should prepare for things to go out of date.

Once they go out of date, then we have to learn things all over again.

Building Our Knowledge Portfolio

We build our knowledge portfolio just like we do with our financial investment portfolio.

We’ve to put money on it regularly. A small amount still helps, and a bigger amount is even better. We spend time learning and understanding new things.

Diversification is slow important since technology changes a lot, so we’ve thought about that and learn new things to hedge the risk of old knowledge going outdated.

Nowadays, technologies are maturing so everything moves more slowly, so it shouldn’t be too hard to learn things incrementally.

Diversification is a way for us to manage risk. We should think about how to manage risk by balancing high risk, high reward items and low risk, low reward knowledge.

We should never put everything in on basket.

Learning New Technologies Before it Becomes Popular

Learning new technologies before they become popular will let us reap great rewards.

This is how we get opportunities before anyone else. If we learn emerging technologies before anyone else, then we’ll get a chance to help people in no time.

This is because the demand for people that need help with these kinds of technologies is increasing, but the people that know how to work with them is few and far between,

Therefore, this is our chance to shine. It’s a great reason to stay up to update more than anyone else.

Review and Rebalance

Like a real financial investment portfolio, we got to review the performance of the investments in our portfolio and change them out the investments that aren’t doing so well and try other items that may perform better.

It’s not as risky as an investment portfolio, so we can just keep learning things until something sticks and we can help people with it.

We just got to keep learning and focus on different technologies at different times.

Conclusion

We should treat learning new knowledge as we do with our financial investment portfolio.

They’re both investments and they’ll both pay off if we keep track of their performance and keep everything up to date.

With a learning portfolio, we just keep learning and find out what people need.

We keep doing that until we get the opportunities that we want.

Also, we should know when to stop so that we can deliver something in a reasonable timeline.

Being a good remote worker takes a lot of discipline. We’ve to do everything ourselves without anyone watching.

In this article, we’ll look at some habits we can adopt to become a good remote developer.

Keeping Regular Office Hours

Keeping regular office hours important to control the amount of work that we’re doing regularly.

This lets us take breaks sometimes and work at other times.

Interruptions can be kept to a minimum by working when there’re no meetings scheduled.

All we have to do is to keep a block of time aside to work for a few hours as if we’re in the office.

Plan and Structure Our Workday

Since organizing our schedule is mostly on when we’re working remotely, we’ve to structure it so that we can get stuff done without forgetting to do things.

This means we got to keep our mind sharp and our memory is more important than ever since we’ve to remember when meetings take place since nobody will walk by us to tell us to go to meetings like if we’re working in an office.

If our memory isn’t the sharpest, then we have to write everything down and give us plenty of reminders.

Dress Up

We still got to dress up so that it feels like we’re doing work even if we’re working at home.

It makes us feel like work if we’re wearing work clothes.

Set Aside a Designated Work Area

A designated work area is definitely something that we need. We should at the same spot every day to have a routine.

It’s should be a quiet place where people can’t walk in and out. We don’t want to have people walking in and out in meetings.

Take Breaks

We should schedule a time for breaks throughout the day. This way, we’ll stay sane while working on tasks at home.

There’s just no way that we can work without breaks. We still need to walk off for lunch breaks and toilet breaks as if we’re working at the office.

Eating while working isn’t healthy. It also distracts us from working so we may make mistakes.

Avoid Distractions

This is another reason to have a quiet place to work at home. We got to remove those distractions.

There’s no excuse to have any distractions since we can completely control our environment.

Therefore, when we’re working, we should have a computer with work stuff like our text editors, IDEs, and terminal windows open.

Close all the things that distract us like social media, YouTube, and everything else and just get to work.

If we’re done with our work early, then we can take a break earlier. That’s one thing that we should take advantage of. The faster that we work, the more breaks we can take.

We won’t look lazy if we’re taking too many breaks at home since we got all our stuff done and no one can watch us taking breaks.

Get Started Early

The earlier we start, then the earlier that we can take a break. That’s one good reason to get started earlier.

Also, since we don’t have a commute, we can work a few hours before we have any meetings when our mind is freshest and we don’t have any meetings.

Early morning is a great time to work if we work from home since we can actually use that time to work instead of waiting for the bus or being stuck in traffic.

Don’t Stay at Home

In addition to working from home, we can also work from other places like coffee shops, libraries, and other places with wifi if they’re open.

The change of environment is less boring and it lets us go anywhere we want to work, which is nice.

Make it Harder for Ourselves to Mess Around on Social Media

Since no one is watching us work, it might be tempting to be messing around with social media during work hours.

However, that’s a bad idea since it slows down our work and removes the focus that we all need.

Developers already have so many windows and browser tabs open, we don’t need more of them to distract us.

Therefore, leave them for when they’re done.

Conclusion

We should keep our focus by removing distractions and don’t mess around with anything other than work.

Keeping office regular office hours and working early is good since our mind is fresh and we don’t have any meetings.

Being a good remote worker takes a lot of discipline. We have to do everything ourselves without anyone watching.

In this article, we’ll look at some habits we can adopt to become a good remote developer.

Know When to Get Off Work

Since we’re working at home, we don’t have to go home from the office.

Therefore, we should know when we should stop working when working remotely.

We should aim to get off work at the same time as we do in the office. This way, we can take the breaks that we need.

Embrace the Perks of Working Remotely

Working remotely is great because we can control our workplace and we can do anything we want as long we finish our stuff.

Therefore, we should aim to embrace the good side of working remotely by keeping a flexible schedule and enjoy ourselves in different ways that working in the office outside of work.

There’s so much we can do now that we aren’t confined in the office that we should enjoy it while it lasts.

Automation for Remote Work

Developers are all about making things automated. Therefore, we should make our work automated as well.

We can set automatically schedule for notifying when we’re away on most messaging systems like Slack so that we all know that we’re away from the keyboard with something like Zapier.

Also, we can send video meeting links automatically by using Zapier.

It can also greet people automatically on Slack.

We can also do the same things with IFTTT by automatically creating recipes do automatically send notifications when something happens and many more that we probably haven’t think of yet.

As developers, we can also write our own scripts to do automation, which opens up an infinite number of possibilities as long as we can use libraries and APIs to help us automate our work.

Create Our Own Water Cooler

Chatrooms are great for water cooler conversations. We can create chatrooms between different people and there’s even more private than chatting neat the water cooler in the office.

This is because we can create private or public chat rooms that are only between the people we’re chatting with.

Also, we can send GIFs around and talk about the weather online, among many other things we can chat about.

Use an Online Whiteboard

Online whiteboard are just as good as real whiteboards, if not better, for brainstorming.

Online whiteboards can be of any size, whereas a physical whiteboard can only be so big.

We can use it to write anything, uploading pictures, add links, attach files, and do much more, which adds to the conversation in ways that we can’t do with regular whiteboards.

Also, we can save a snapshot of our online whiteboard so we can go back to what we have later.

The best we can do with a regular whiteboard is to take a photo of it, which isn’t that great.

Therefore, we should take advantage of all those capabilities that aren’t available with physical whiteboards.

Brainstorm Alone

Since we’re working in our own home, we can brainstorm alone quietly instead of having to think inside a noisy open office.

It’s a great opportunity to just close our room’s door and brainstorm.

Many people brainstorm better on their own, so we can take full advantage of our home office by brainstorming alone quietly.

Decide If We Need a Meeting

We should only call a meeting if it’s really needed. If chat messages and emails are good enough, then we can just use them and not disrupt people with extra meetings.

However, if we have no meetings at all, maybe we can make an optional one so that people can socialize online.

Standup meetings can be done on chat since it’s only used to update people on our progress for example.

Record the Meeting

We can record meetings without people feeling creepy in a remote meeting since people aren’t watching a camera recording ourselves.

That’s great since we can record our meetings instead of having people take notes.

We can also go back and watch the recorded meetings at the speed we want if we want to recall some information from the meeting.

Conclusion

We should take advantage of the benefits of working remotely, like having a rich whiteboard for brainstorming and recording meetings to let recall information from them afterward.

Also, we need to set boundaries so that we can all take a break.

To be a good programmer, we should follow some easy to adopt habits to keep our programming career long-lasting.

In this article, we’ll look at some of them and how to adopt them.

Make it Work and Then Make Them Fast

If our stuff works but it’s too slow, then we have to make them fast enough so that users won’t be frustrated.

We can commit the code that works but slow, and then we optimize it what we have to make it faster.

Keep Some Social Media Profiles

Social media profiles aren’t only for chatting with friends. It also builds our brand in the online world.

There’s no better way to get opportunities now than to keep a public presence online.

As long as people see our profile and that we looking experts to the outside world, then opportunities will come online.

We got to get an audience by gaining followers and teaching people what we know.

People will appreciate the knowledge that we give even if millions of people have talked about the same topic.

Everyone has their own angle on things so we can always provide something unique to other people.

Also, we should follow people that we can learn from or are interested in looking at their insights or be entertained by what they post.

Asking Questions

Questions are always worth asking. When having something we don’t know and can’t find easily, we should ask them to get the answer faster than trying to find them ourselves.

Brainstorming Don’t Pay the Bills

We got to output things for customers to use so that they can be happy. Brainstorming isn’t going to help us much.

So we shouldn’t take too much time to do it.

Have Hobbies Outside of Software

Hobbies are a great way to take our minds outside of work, so we should have some so we can learn something outside and take our break from work.

The last thing we want to do is thinking about work every day of the week. Therefore, it’ll help us avoid burnout.

Don’t Be Opinionated on Technology Choices

We should have too much bias about what technologies or programming ideology to use.

Preaching is going to be annoying and ignorant, so we should keep an open mind and accept other people’s judgment.

Don’t Accept Bad Workplace Behavior

Bad workplace behavior like bullying, favoritism, sexism, racism, are all unacceptable.

Also, make sure that we all get paid on time. If any of those things are happening, we need to find a new place and get away from the misery caused by bad behavior.

Automated Tests

Automated tests like unit tests and end-to-end tests are very helpful to check regressions so we should have them so we don’t deploy bad code to production.

Time Management

We only got a finite amount of time in a day, so we got to manage them properly so that we can all get higher priority things done and then go down the list by priority.

Soft Skills

Soft skills are just as important as hard skills. We’ve to work with other people so we’ve to make sure that we work with them well so that we get stuff done together.

Communication is important so that everyone is can work together and not misunderstand what everyone else is doing.

Also, we may want to find new opportunities eventually, so it’ll also help if we have soft skills.

If we have a side business, then we need sales and customer skills even more. There’s just no way to get around doing that ourselves at the beginning.

Don’t Get Discouraged

Never give up on anything. We just have to change so that we can gain success in some other way.

We just find what sticks and then double down on that. Nothing about success is going to be easy.

Conclusion

We should never give up on anything until we get success. Pivoting is the way to change until we find something that sticks.

Also, we shouldn’t be opinionated in technology or accept bad behavior in workplaces.

Keeping a social media presence online will also help us in the future.