Things I Wish I Had Started Doing Sooner as a Software Engineer

Photo by Camylla Battani on Unsplash

Hello World! 

In my first ever blog post, I thought I would begin by doing a review of an article written by a well-known software engineer.  Part of what I am excited about with this blog is to encourage myself to read more content from other engineers.  So, without much thinking I selected an article from Gregely Orosz, writer of The Pragmatic Engineer.  What drew me to Gregely?  Honestly, it was proximity.  I had just recently read another of his articles a week or so prior about the importance of writing for software engineers  and I remembered the name.    When searching for a place to start, therefore, I went with the first thing that came to mind.  We all start somewhere, right?  

As expected, Gregely did not disappoint, and I soon found myself reading what I thought would be a fitting article, “Advice to Myself When Starting Out as a Software Developer. “  As the title suggests, this article talks about advice Gregely wished they had known sooner.  Gregely summarizes their points in the following list: 

• Take the time to read two books per year on software engineering 

• Learn the language you use at work in-depth, to the very bottom 

• Pair with other developers more often 

• Write unit tests and run them against a CI 

• Make refactoring a habit and master refactoring tools 

• Know that good software engineering is experience.  Get lots of it 

• Teach what you learn 

The first thing that struck me was that, hmmm, this seemed familiar.  I realized I had read this post a year or so before.  As I read, I realized some of the advice I had absorbed the first time reading. For instance, I was very interested in using more unit tests at work and had already started.  I was attempting to read books on software development, but at this point I had not finished nearly as many as I had started.  

In all, the article affirmed several thoughts that I had been contemplating recently.  One such thought is that I needed to master my tools.  I have been feeling for some time that I am very much a jack of all trades, but master of none.  Lately I had been considering learning something in depth and this article made me realize; I should probably start with the tools I use every day. I should really learn how JavaScript works on a deeper level.  I should really pick a single editor and start learning it inside and out to streamline my workflow.