How to make a good start in programming

It is difficult to enter the field of software development. Of course, if you are still a beginner programmer, I believe you have a deep understanding of how difficult it is to find a job without experience or too much experience. If you have been working on software development for a while, I believe you will also have a deep understanding of how difficult it is to stand out in this highly competitive industry.

I have been familiar with many developers who are just getting started. They are very confused because they do not know where to invest their energy to develop their careers, nor where to look in the future. There are so many options that are dazzling: There are so many technologies and there are so many ways to go. So that one is correct?

Correct Way of Thinking

I will give some specific suggestions below, but before that, you have to make sure that you are considering your career in a correct way.

One of the most important aspects of your career is corporate awareness: Consider your career as an enterprise. This company hired you. Enterprise awareness helps you to make correct and objective decisions on what time should be done and when to invest in your own career. There are a lot of developers who just take the software development profession as a temporary job or just a job-this idea is uncertain short-sighted. I don't know if you have found it. In the same decision, it's hard to persuade others that we can come up with a lot of truth easily, but it's hard to come up with ourselves? The reason is that when advising others, we can always stand on an objective standpoint without the interference of excessive emotions such as worries and fears.

The principles of enterprise consciousness are similar to those above. It allows us to make more objective decisions.

Establish enterprise awareness

In other words, why can't we establish enterprise awareness in the first place?

If you have never experienced it yourself, it is difficult to accumulate experience. Most software development jobs now require some experience. As a novice developer with limited experience, how can we "have" a certain amount of work experience? In general, to become a software development engineer, we need a very lucky opportunity, probably a QA or other job, and then rely on our own hard work and learning. This is a long journey.

The following describes my shortcuts.

Assume that your "enterprise" has hired yourself. This is not difficult. You don't even need to write any materials or submit any procedures. Then we can access the business. What should we do? I mean, it's not just about playing games, but actually making money. Of course, our ultimate goal is not to make money, but to accumulate experience. We don't have to quit our current job. We just use our spare time to engage in projects, so that we can write down our real experiences on our resume.

In the future, it is impossible for employers to ask stupid questions about how much your project has earned. (Even if they did ask, there is no need to say it .) Therefore, it is not necessary to make money on your own projects. Of course, it's okay if you want to get some income.

You can create websites for relatives and friends. You can also talk to some local enterprises about whether to develop some applications. It doesn't matter how you get the business. Remember that your purpose is to increase your resume's meat-I don't mean to let you brag on your resume.

Develop mobile applications

Developing a mobile app not only adds experience to highlight your resume, but also makes a little money. In addition, you will be given the opportunity to talk about it in the future.

I often recommend that developers have to contact mobile applications in their initial stages, because mobile apps can be used by only one person, in addition, this will not only allow people to start and end the process of building an application (this experience is very valuable), but also provide conclusive evidence to demonstrate your code capabilities.

What any company is most worried about when recruiting is whether these well-spoken developers are really competent. However, you can eliminate this concern by presenting your own source code. Of course, it would be better if you have created an app online store.

If you are interested in developing mobile apps, You can first take a look at the basic tutorials on this aspect: Introduction to Android and beginning iOS 7 development.

The following two advanced tutorials are highly recommended by me:

1. Professional Android 4 Application Development

2. IOS programming: The big nerd ranch

Writing mobile apps not only improves your resume, but also gives you more confidence in yourself and more skillful software development skills.

Of course, it may be a bit difficult to get started at the beginning, and there are also a lot of people learning, but we cannot deny that this is a wise investment behavior, because the current mobile device development momentum is very fierce, personnel requirements in this regard have been increasing.

Plan your career

I often say that it is necessary to promote myself, because it can give software developers better job opportunities and higher salaries. My suggestion is that we should plan our career well, instead of simply looking for a job. If you have positioned yourself early and understand the height you want to stand for, you will benefit a lot from your future career.

One of my tips is to write a blog. The sooner you start, the better. I often regret that it would be nice if I had a blog five or earlier. Every blog-writing developer I have ever talked about this. Do not create a blog, but use a blog. Strive to write an article every week, even if you have no interesting content, stick to it. A few years later, you will be a great writer. Looking back at the past, you will be able to see the historical traces of the development of various thoughts and the ups and downs of your gradual evolution.

The key to planning a career is persistence, because it is a long-running battle. Creating a blog, creating a brand, and so on will lead you to a longer and longer career. Therefore, do not rub, start now!

Mentor and Benefit

Correct suggestions and discussions can guide us in the right direction and save a lot of time. I suggest you make friends with some experienced software developers, ask them for advice, and learn from them.

It is very difficult for you to make friends only when you need them. If you do not want them to become your mentor, the other party will certainly accept it. As the saying goes, the church apprentice will starve to death, and sometimes will not teach you a lot as a mentor. The key is to make a return.

Below are some of my suggestions:

Please eat. In other words, many feelings are built on the dinner table.

Comment on the blogs of software developers you enjoy. If you give insightful comments, they will pay attention to you.

Switch. Are you interested in other fields? Can I exchange fitness and weight loss knowledge for software development information? The best result is that both parties can make profits.

User Group. There are many user groups all over the world, and you can become one of them. If you can go up on a regular basis, you can contact other users to develop friendship.

Read

Reading is a step of human progress, and a way to truly excel at people's own strength. Reading appropriate software development books will help us understand concepts. It may take several years for us to learn from the experiences of successful software development.

Below is a list of books I listed for entry software developers.

• Code complete, a classic of code structure.

• Clean code: describes the key concepts of writing code. It is worth reading.

• Design Patterns-After mastering it, you will be able to excel in your future career.

• Programming pearls (programming pearl)-reading well. Although it is very difficult, you will know that these efforts are worthwhile in the future.

• Agile Software Development, principles, patterns, and practices (Agile Software development principles, models, and practices).

Good luck. I hope my suggestions will be useful to you. Everything is hard at the beginning, but if we choose the right shortcut, we will surely go a more smooth and faster way, and the career we can achieve will be more brilliant.

The original English title is: how to get a jump start in your programming career.
This article was originally published at www.codeceo.com

How to make a good start in programming