This is a guest post from Jen Weber. Enjoy. Dear new developer, Welcome! I’m so glad you are here. We need your help to build accessible apps, inclusive engineering teams, and incredible products. … | Continue reading
Dear new developer, Recently, I had a conversation with a new developer who was trying to break into the job market. While I’m always leery of giving too much job hunting advice to folks in t… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, I remember the first time I decompiled a java file to debug an issue. The first time I recorded a video. The first time I presented to a meetup. The first time I wrote professio… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Vincent Ng. Enjoy. Dear New Developer, You have embarked yourself in a tech journey full of opportunities. You will encounter and overcome many obstacles and challenges al… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, When you are coding, you must be precise. If not, the compiler yells at you (if you are using a statically typed language) or you have runtime errors (if not). A mistake as simp… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, When I was a new dev, I brought my lunch almost every day. I would take a break from coding, walk out to a small embankment, and sit in the sun. I’d munch on my sandwich a… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Ben Greenberg. Enjoy. Dear New Developer, Welcome to the wonderful and exciting world of software development! You may have chosen this field for any combination of innume… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Jean Lee. Enjoy. Dear new developer, Change is hard, but you need to influence folks to make it happen. Here are five questions to ask when you want to have influence over… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, It’s a crazy market right now for developer talent. But I still see plenty of new developers struggling. I also see some mid and senior developers struggling. “What?… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, If you interact with web APIs at your job, learning curl is a good investment. Curl is a flexible, powerful, command line utility which lets you make HTTP requests. In my curren… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, I’ve written before about how being a developer sets you up for a lot of adjacent professions. Jobs like: Engineering managerTechnical trainerStartup CTOProduct managerDev… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, Sometimes you are confronted with decisions for which you simply don’t know the correct answer. This has happened to me many times over the years. A recent example is that… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, Criticizing code (and software solutions in general) is an important skill. It helps transmit norms, increase team knowledge, and improve solutions. But it isn’t something… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, Go out and speak at a meetup. This will have the following benefits: Decrease your fear of public speakingIncrease your knowledge of a topicHelp build a community of developersB… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Joyce Park. Enjoy. To my newer colleagues: Welcome! I’m so excited to have you in the dev community, and honored to hopefully be able to contribute by sharing a few time-t… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, As I mentioned before, the raw “stuff” of software is primarily text files. Actually, the foundation of software is ideas and information, but unfortunately a comput… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, Caching is a common architectural pattern that helps with performance and scalability. Spending some time learning about this will help you build better systems and understand e… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Sonja Parsell. Enjoy. Dear Developer, Don’t misinterpret a small distraction, or even a big disaster, as a “sign” that coding isn’t for you. There … | Continue reading
Dear new developer, Kindness is an unsung virtue for software development. I touched on it in this post on empathy, but wanted to emphasize it again. Practice kindness. When I was young, I thought … | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Dan Walkes. Enjoy. Dear developer, I was thinking this week about my Great Uncle, Bob Van Gerpen, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011. Bob was my Grandma’s youngest brot… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, I had a friend who brought me into a club. The specifics of the club don’t matter, but like most clubs, it had a variety of executive roles. Someone had to run the meeting… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Adam Steel. Enjoy. Dear New Developer, Getting your first developer job can feel like a big accomplishment. And it is! It can feel so big and you can feel so relieved to h… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, One thing I love about software development is that you’ll always be learning. This is because of two things. First, there’s better and different hardware. It is pos… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, I remember when I started out, I thought meetings were a waste of time. All those people in a room (now a Zoom), discussing an issue. Folks would go back and forth, and at the e… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Christie Brandao. Enjoy. Dear new developer, It’s easy to get wrapped up in only focusing on the deeply technical aspects of your job, especially if many parts of the stac… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, A few years ago, I suggested you over-index at your first month or two on the job. I stand by that advice. Extra effort up front will earn you a reputation as a good employee. I… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Akira Brand. Enjoy. Dear New Developer, Be a mentor. Seriously. Find someone a little bit behind you in their journey and mentor them. All you need is an hour a week. Heck… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, Shut off your notifications. There are so many interruptions in your workday that it can be hard to find the time to dive into deep work. Disabling alerts from communication pro… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Landy Simpson. Enjoy. Dear new developer, This year has put everyone’s mental and physical health to the test, including yours truly. There’s the ongoing pandemic, the Bla… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Perry Tiu. Enjoy. Dear New Developer, Ask for great hardware. Ask for that latest MacBook. Ask for that extra built-in 2TB of flash storage. Ask for that 32-inch monitor. … | Continue reading
Dear new developer, If you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s hard to learn it. There are so many resources for learning, but if you can’t find them, you’re going to… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Allie Cooper. Enjoy. It’s one thing to be able to write good code, but professional written communication is something else entirely. The ability to efficiently and authen… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, I think that there are only really four tasks you need to do to do a good job as a new developer. Say what you are going to do, then do it. This is all about communicating what … | Continue reading
Dear new developer, I’ve been surprised by how often I get a response from people I consider “famous”. A few examples. Brad Feld, a well known venture capitalist, was willing to d… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from an anonymous FAANG engineer. Enjoy. Dear New Developer, In 2020, one question lurks in all of our minds: What the hell is going on? And yet, for many of us, life not only … | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Shawn Wang aka swyx. Enjoy. Dear new developer, If there’s a golden rule to learning, it’s this one. You already know that you will never be done learning. But… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Karl Hughes. Enjoy. Dear new developer, I was in your shoes in 2011. I was finishing up a degree in mechanical engineering that I would never use and looking for a way to … | Continue reading
Dear new developer, “Outcomes over output” is one of my favorite letters on this blog. In it, Mark, a guest poster, talks about what business actually values (outcomes) over what develo… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, I’ve spent a lot of my time maintaining working code. I think that is more typical of software developers than working in greenfield development. Yes, there are definitely… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Minh Pham. Enjoy. Dear new developer, I want to start off by saying Congrats and Good job. If you’re reading this, it’s likely you know how to code – and… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, The honest truth is that you won’t know everything. No one does. The CEO, CTO, the team lead, that really smart senior developer on your team, none of them know everything… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Pariss Athena. Enjoy. Dear new developer, Honestly, I don’t think there’s one absolute answer. I believe the answer depends on you and the risk you’re comfortable taking. … | Continue reading
Dear new developer, Make sure you maintain your work life balance. You’ll never know everything. You shouldn’t try. But even if you accept that, there may still be a temptation to work … | Continue reading
Dear new developer, I thought this article was worth sharing, as it is a relatively inexperienced developer talking to newer devs. But as I read it, one piece of advice stuck out and is worth empha… | Continue reading
Dear new developer, Perhaps you took the first job offered to you. Perhaps you joined a friend’s company, then realized it wasn’t quite what you were promised. Perhaps you joined a comp… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Tim Tyrrell. Enjoy. Dear new developer, New developers are making mistakes. They are making mistakes every day. As a new developer, one’s job is to recognize one’s mistake… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Lorna Mitchell. Enjoy. Dear new developer, Recently, I decided my seven-year-old niece was old enough for her first programmable device. She has done a little bit of Scrat… | Continue reading
This is a guest post from Mia de Búrca. Enjoy. Dear new developer, You’re probably going to want to quit. The very qualities that make writing software appealing can also make it frustrating beyond… | Continue reading