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jasoncwarner / ama

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How to level up as a mid developer? #5

Open indifferentghost opened 4 years ago

indifferentghost commented 4 years ago

I've been programming about three years now, I feel like I've hit a stalling point. I'm curious if you have advice or suggestions on how to bridge the mid -> senior gap.

I appreciate you having this AMA open and look forward to your response!

jasoncwarner commented 4 years ago

Great question!

I think of getting better as a developer as I would getting better as a basketball player: intentional practice, being around better players, and watching/absorbing as much as possible. To get better at nearly anything in life, the shortcut to doing so is to understand why something is the way it is or why someone is doing something that way etc.

Some concrete thoughts.

  1. read lots of code on GitHub
  2. write lots of code focused on solving problems you care to understand really deeply
  3. ask "why" a lot....a lot. Ask more experienced folks to break down their thought process.
  4. branch out and explore new languages or frameworks and look for different thought patterns. See issue #3 about why Erlang for one problem domain as an example.

I'm sure there are more, but this is a good start.

If I had to pick just one thing, it would be to really seek to understand as much as possible. Ask questions, particularly 'why'.