Introduction
I know there are a number of articles on this subject. My goal in writing this article is to get them all into a single article which covers the majority of things. This article is based on my personal experience, teammate's experience and my manager's inputs.
As you all know, I never want to keep my learning and knowledge to myself, if you are working for the software industry or working as software developer, try to relate to things mentioned in this article, definitely it will benefit you.
To be a successful developer, you need a lot of practice, dedication, and commitment.
So, here are the points which you could practice to become a successful software developer, if these points help you to improve yourself I will be really very glad.
- Make it never come back
While solving a problem in our code, we’re not done when the symptoms stop. We’re done when the problem has disappeared and never comes back. We usually stop solving a problem when it doesn’t have any visible symptoms. We’ve fixed the bug, and there seem to be some hidden bugs. So we may think that –“why work on it? It’s fine for now, right?” No. Remember the old proverb “A stitch in correct time saves nine.”
- Read the source code as much as you can
Writing software code is easier than understanding the code, which is written by others. Most people will agree with this. Sometimes the documentation is not complete, sometimes the code is messy. I strongly recommend that you read the code as much as you can, so that you will understand the difference between quality code and messy code. Definitely this will improve your coding quality. If you want to write good code, you should know what the good code is, again if you want to know whether it is a good code, you need to read the code.
- Willingness to learn
In order to become an excellent programmer, you must first have an intention to become an excellent programmer. No amount of training will turn somebody who does not have an intention to become an excellent programmer.
Keep following the technical forums, magazines, blogs, conferences and technical seminars.
- Follow the standards, don’t create your own
Unless your organization does not have any coding standards, don’t create your own. If your organization doesn’t have any coding standards, I would suggest you to create the standards and make your fellow team follow the same.
Some of coding standards are listed below:
- File naming conventions
- Function & Module naming conventions
- Variable naming conventions
- Comments
- List of Do’s and Do not’s
- Keep the code simple
Software design can be defined by the below two statements.
- The effort of maintenance is directly proportional to the code complexity.
- It is more important to reduce the complexity of maintenance than complexity of writing code.
I would like to suggest that you write the code simply and make it easy for maintenance because what we care about the most is- “Software is the future”. The simpler your code is, the fewer bugs it will have.
- Consistency
Does consistency mean uniformity? The answer for this is “No”. “Uniformity” means all the things should look the same. But “Consistency” means similar things should look the same and different things should look different. This principleis applicable for both front end and also for code.
- Test your Code
Testing is mandatory even after a small change in your code. Even you are on a tight schedule, even if you changed the variable name or just a comment.
You should feel happy if you find a bug in your code, because now your software has been decreased by one bug.
- Don’t repeat the code
I strongly recommend you to go back to your code once youhave written it, and try to refactor, avoid the duplicate code and separate your code into modules. This will surely make your code more reusable and testable.
- Be Productive at work
We live in an age where social media, text messaging and emails have become an integral part of our lives. If you're active on one or more social media apps (Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and so on) and check them frequently, it could be a distraction to your focus and productivity.
“Allocate a block of time to check your social media, emails and text messages.”
Make it as a habit. Once it becomes a habit, you can improve your productivity.
- Share knowledge with others
Don't be selfish by keeping your knowledge to yourself. Try to create a culture of helping others. You'll find that you will work better as a team and you can help each other to improve. There are plenty of opportunities to share your knowledge which include social network, blogs, forums and conferences.
Summary
To summarize, it is easy to do just coding but to become a successful software developer there could be a list of thousands (and even more) things but let us take the quantity which we can handle easily. Just to keep your list small and follow them strictly throughout of your developer life.