How to become a great developer

Two steps to become a great developer

Original Author EriC DavisIs an active developer of Redmine.

Here I would like to share two steps for me to become a great developer. Being a great developer is a constant process, which I have seen in other great developers.

Step 1: write more code
It sounds easy, but trust me. There are a lot of excuses that our developers don't want to write code:
1. I don't have time;
2. I don't know the library of this Code;
3. I don't have a good environment to write code;
4. I don't know how to start;
5. I am very tired.
These excuses can all be attributed to fear. You are afraid of something. Fear of wasting time, fear of ugliness in front of people, fear of making mistakes, fear of itself.

Let me share two stories with you, mainly about my fears.
I used to be Redmine a few years ago (Note: This is a cross-platform project management system developed based on the ROR framework. It is a rising star in the project management system .) . But I am not an activist in the code library. Why? Because Redmine is a large and complex code library, I don't know how it works. Therefore, I only make some minor changes in my little world. Finally, I found a way to solve these problems, that is, to implement it in person.

To use my product, seeprojectrun, I have to charge the user via credit card. It would be crazy to accept cash. After listening to a lot of stories about how developers screwed it up, I became as scared as I was dead and pushed away all the work of writing paid code. Yes, as a seller who once developed four credit card interfaces, I am afraid to write Payment Code for the customers on the bill. What is this about? (Note: WTF is short for what the fuck)
If you indulge in fear, it will be like a mistress who will steal your life. So how can we eliminate your fear of writing more code?

Write more code

It's as strange as you heard. I found that the only way to overcome the fear of writing code is to let it go from where it comes. Is this the simplest way to solve this problem? Start a new small project and submit patches for open-source projects. Every time you write code, you will learn something about programming, your development tools, or yourself. Do you really think that I have over 57 daily reconstruction emails just to fix bad code? No, they are all big hammers that I threw at programmers.

Oh, the story about my fear of writing code is over.
I just completed the rewrite of Redmine's core code last night and confirmed to submit it this morning. If it crashes, I will fix it.
If it is really spam code, I will discard it completely. No one cares, and no one remembers this error.

In the next two days, I will focus on the code that charges SeeProjectRun by credit card. Over 200
This case study proves that I have been able to completely overcome the fear of writing code.

Do not be afraid to write code.

Step 2: work with great developers

If you want to program creatively, you need to work with great developers so that you can see how they write code.
You only need:
One enthusiastic developer (you)
A great developer (they)
A little code

If you deal with these problems every day, with a little improvement, you will have two great developers. Add experts at any time (Great developers
), And then proceed. You don't have to keep searching for all the great developers. You just need to look for developers that are more clever and clever than you in technology. But if your company does not hire great developers, or you are just a free code developer like me, what should you do?

Start to read the code written by great developers

I read the code of great developers as a hobby. They contribute so much code that you will find yourself in reading so many code and even dream of writing code. (Note: smart developers are often able to develop new code. They usually do the first step, that is, to write a large amount of code)

Let's get started.

Let's start now. If you don't do anything, you will never be a great developer.
1. Every week, you must always write at least one line of code in the new code library every day. Exchange Code libraries after the end of each week.
This may be a new feature, a vulnerability modification, a refactoring, or just a prank on the idea. This is not important. Think about how to write the code and then write it out. Don't you know that good code is built on a good start (IDEA? Perform a refactoring in edmine and then report it to me in the following comments.

2. Find a way to learn from great developers every week

If you work with great developers:
Privately view the code they submitted;
Invite them to modify the Comparison Program code together;
Or buy lunch for them and ask them frequently used methods.

If you work by yourself:
Download some popular projects and read a small class every week;
Whenever you find a method, you can obtain some API documents that show the relationship between source code content,
Or find a mentor and work with them on some actual code.

Shameless self-Sales

I want to make a quotation. Skip this step if you do not want to read it. I will wait for your decision.

That's great. You didn't skip it. I have learned a lot from creating my Redmine plug-in. I want to share my knowledge, but there is no text exchange that can replace one-on-one interaction. So this morning, I started a service. I will provide one-on-one tutoring for payers to help them improve their technical skills in Redmine development. This is a fully customizable course, $179 per week. In this way, we can provide targeted counseling on how to improve your abilities. I only provide this service to five payers. After that, I will close this service for a while. If you are interested in this, all the details are on this URL.

So no matter what you do, start from today unless you are afraid to become a great developer.
But there are still many places above. (The implication is that many people are not great developers)