What Are The Most Important Traits Of A Software Developer?

welcome to this episode of dev questions with tim corey join us as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development understanding the industry and new technology now here's your host expert developer and online educator tim corey what are the most important traits of a software developer what attributes will help me succeed as a developer now these are questions that i wish i had asked 20 years ago because i think that it would have helped focus me on what i should do next so let's talk about this in today's episode of dev questions i think there's two main attributes that a software developer needs to have now there may be more peripheral ones than maybe others we can talk about but i think these are the two that are really the most important the key ones and the best part is that neither of these is something that you're born with okay so let's start off with a quick illustration if you are growing up and your parents say you can be anything you want to be that's baloney that you can't be whatever you want to be it sounds great and it sounds encouraging but the reality is that you can't be i wanted to be a um a fighter pilot when i grew up i wanted to fly jets i want to fly them fast that seemed like the coolest job for me i actually went down the recruiter at one point and said this is what i want to do and fortunately i had a very kind person who kind of pulled me aside and said listen here's the reality you are at the time i was six foot six he said there is no way you will fit in a cockpit you just won't and even if they somehow crammed you into a cockpit if you ever had to eject you would die not joke not exaggeration you will die i was not born to be a fighter pilot i couldn't be i did not have the correct physical build for it now i do have the height to be an nba player not everybody does so if you are five foot flat well you probably can't be an nba player i'm not saying you can't because there have been exceptions where very very short people have become nba players but we all know that's not the the rule that's the exception and even those people were incredibly physically gifted i was not physically gifted that way so even though i have one of the requirements to be in the nba the reality is i didn't have the ability to be in the nba so there's some careers that are just closed off to me at birth like my genetics won't allow certain things and sometimes people say well software development is like that and i get the perspective in some cases i've even felt that way a little bit in that there are certain types of people that just aren't cut out for the software development field that's what it feels like but the reality is that anyone can be a software developer anyone so let's get that off a table right now you're not limited by your genetics your brain however it works can do this but let's talk about the the attributes that are most important to software developers and number one is determination this is when you keep going after failure when something happens where you fail what do you do do you pick yourself back up and keep going or do you decide it's just too hard this is pretty much true of any field but it's really important that you focus on the mindset of i am going to do this even if you love software development and i do i love software development but even though i love software development there have been some incredibly hard times i can't tell you the number of times that i have been rejected when i've applied for positions i have applied for hundreds of positions that never even called me back that rejection can feel personal at times either you can say i'm just not cut out for this or you can say they just didn't pick me there's a big difference you say you know what somebody will and you keep going you keep that attitude of i can do this then if you get a job you know what's gonna happen you're gonna write software and it's gonna break it's gonna break bad and you you're gonna face a time when you say i don't know how to fix this and it's gonna be frustrating and difficult and confusing and if you say you know what that's it i'm out you're gonna be out in your first year i remember a time when i thought i was a great developer i was a junior developer i really was but i thought like oh i've got this i was really too cocky and i was building software and something happened in my software now my software was interacting with conveyor belts and with another system that was one state away and there was all this interactions and something was going wrong and we all got called in on a sunday and i remember being you know standing around with the vice president of the company we were working for and my boss was there and other people were there and they were asking what's going on and a little bit of the um finger pointing blame game going on and it came around to is it your software and i said my software is great my software works just fine there's no way it can be my software it's this other guy's software i'm sure of it and part of it was the other guy wasn't in the room and i i truly honestly believed it was his problem not mine turns out it wasn't his problem it was my problem and i tell you what i have never felt so small i have never felt like i wanted to crawl off in a corner curl up and die like that because i had just declared in front of everybody that it wasn't my problem and it was and every eye then turns to me and now i'm like oops and then i have to go fix it but because it's a production level problem because everybody's involved it's not like i get a week to fix it i have to fix it now and i have to fix it with my boss over my shoulder with the vice president of the company looking at me with everybody else waiting on me that kind of pressure can be really overwhelming now i put myself in that situation because i was the one that opened my mouth and said it can't be my problem and my boss very kindly but he chewed me out over that one and he said don't ever do that again don't say something you don't know is not true but i could have given up then i could have said you know what i can't do this i'm not good enough because i tell you what everybody there thought that i wasn't good enough because i wasn't in that instance but if you're determined if you say i wasn't good enough then but i will be i may have failed then but i won't always that level of determination even in the midst of failure will carry you through but you have to be determined you have to hold on to the fact that yes you can do it i have seen a lot of potentially great developers give up it's not because they couldn't do the job it's because they didn't believe they could do the job they wrote great code i i really it crushed me to see it i used to teach in a community college and i would see my students and some of them had so much potential they all have potential in fact i had students that other people are told you don't have potential but when they were finally able to see they had potential they went on to do great things and yet people that had more natural talent than they did when they got faced with the the difficult times said i'm not cut out for this and because that it held them back and because it held them back they finally just gave up so if you want me developer you need to be determined you will face hard times it's okay we all do the key is to not give in the key is to stick with it you will have code that just won't work if you want to see an example of this watch the timco retail manager series you will see code that doesn't work you will see stupid mistakes you will see tim bang his head against the desk trying to figure out why this doesn't work and usually on video because i tell you what it happens i had a video where i was calling the api and i had to pass in the the token that said i'm authenticated and i forgot to put bearer in front of it and say bearer and then the token i just passed the token in and it wouldn't work i couldn't figure out why it's a stupid little mistake and i finally figured i said you know what you've probably been screaming at the screen put the bearer in and i had a person comment recently i said yes i was screaming at the screen my neighbors thought i was crazy but you know you just had to put bearer there it happens and you know what if i wasn't determined and say you know what i can figure this out then i would have quit if i had quit you wouldn't get the rest of the series and in fact i have felt that way so many times where i say you know what i can't complete this there's something that is stopping me i can't figure this out you push through it you figure it out and you know what sometimes it takes getting help from somebody else and that's okay that's just fine it's actually encouraged but be determined to push through all right so that's the first most important trait of a software developer the number two trait is focus and this is one that will help you move forward faster this is one i had a hard time with when i first started out because there is what's called shiny object syndrome the idea that something new and exciting is coming out and you want to learn that and then you start learning that and then something else comes out you learn that and what happens is you become such a a generalist but in such a shallow level you really can't do anything so the first key here is with focus is practice instead of moving on when you watch a video where you learn a new code technique practice it don't go on to the next video even though you want to to finish a thought or no stop create practice projects and that's plural not just one create multiple focus on learning that well when you've watched a video on something or read a tutorial you haven't really learned it when you learn it is when you do it so do it two to five times that's what i do that's not what i used to do i used to just read tutorial and go cool got it and move on and i tricked myself into thinking i was learning and then i went to actually use these things i missed steps and so it didn't work and i had bugs and i had frustration and only determination to help you push through but i had to go back and really learn it well learn it up front figure out what you caught from the tutorial and what you missed there's often things that you miss so practice instead of moving on and then work on those hard things not just the shiny objects it's easy to get distracted by you know you just start off with c sharp i want to learn web development stop learn c sharp first learn code in the console app first learn about object oriented programming learn about data access learn about other project types that might not yet be web development in c sharp but they will prepare you for what you need to learn so focus on the hard things not just get distracted by the shiny objects so focus is really important if you can focus you can move so much faster it doesn't always feel that way it feels like man this practice has slowed me down i can watch four videos and learn four different topics in one night or i can watch one video and create two practice projects it seems like watching four videos is better right no what's better is to learn one thing well rather than know about four things you wanna learn things well if you're gonna use them in production so that's my encouragement to you there's two things that i would encourage you to make sure you have as attributes one is your determination be determined to keep going even when things get tough and then number two make sure you keep your focus keep focused on what you need to do next keep focusing on practicing and going deeper rather than just skipping from topic to topic when you're building applications focus on it it's so easy to get halfway through an application and get distracted by a different application or a different idea focus in on finishing get to the end before you move on by doing so you will be so far ahead of your competition that you will launch yourself further faster in your career than if you just wander from thing to thing all right so those are the attributes that i wish that i had focused more on see focus those are the things i wish i had as a younger developer because i'd be further along than i am now so i hope you found this episode helpful if you did i'd appreciate if you'd share on the social network of your choice thanks for listening as always i am tim corey [Music] you

Channel: IAmTimCorey

Views: 10,630

Keywords: c#, c# developer questions, dev questions, dev questions series, developer questions, how do i, iamtimcorey, learn c#, tim corey, developer tips, software engineering, software developer, software development, software developer career, how to become a programmer

Id: 7xZjNqnm92U

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021