Well this subject is always in my mind and probably in the minds of a lot of people around me. I will list the things i’m trying to do to become a better developer and the reasons for each item.
1- Read a technical book each week (Yes a week and yes a technical book)
“A little reading goes a long way toward professional advancement. If you read even one good programming book every two months, roughly 35 pages a week, you’ll soon have a firm grasp on the industry and distinguish yourself from nearly everyone around you.” - Steve McConnell
Programmers just read one book each year, that’s sucks I think reading is an easy way for self-improvement is a hard work to read a book every week, but this my first try.
2- Read a non technical book each week.
I think we can grab a lot of new ideas by reading classics literature or science fiction because you have to use your imagination which leads you to be creative when you code, so go grab that Harry Potter book that you have in your bookshelf :-)
3 – Read code
If you want to become a good writer you must read a lot of books, so if you want to become good at programming you should read a lot of code too, try to understand the ideas behind the implementations in the code you read, tweak the solutions and get new results, try to solve a bug in a software that you use on a day to day basics.
4 – Write code
Of course you should write code, ton of it, write trash code, write good code, write every single thing that cross your mind, “not hello world’s allowed”.
6 – Play video games
I need to chill out too, not everything is hard work ;-)
7 – Learn my tools
I will try to spend at least 20 minutes of my day searching a new thing about the tools i normally use
I’ll try to learn a new language in the next months.
I think this is a good list to start if I come with other things I will try to post it in here, I want to know what other people will do in the next months to become a better developer too, so share what you are doing in the next months to accomplish that.
