Putting Yourself Out There as a Developer

Being lucky enough to be surrounded by amazing developers everyday in both my professional and personal life, I’ve always had a little bit of imposter syndrome when discussing my process in learning how to code and sharing the source code for the projects that I’ve completed.

The more and more that I dig deeper into various development and design topics, the more I realize that there will always be something new to learn. This is one of the main reasons why I began this journey from the start. Constant opportunity for growth due to the nature of the ever evolving state of technology. Once a specific topic is mastered, there’s always a new language or framework to dig into.

Last month was my “graduation” from the class that I took at a local code school. I put quotes around the word graduation because I didn’t get an actual degree plus completion of this class doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t more to learn. What I did take away from the experience is to always be humble enough to share your code with others. I’ve learned so much by being vocal about my strengths, weaknesses, and which topics I’d like to learn more about. All of the code reviews, group projects, and pair programming really instilled the idea that everyone has something to contribute through their ideas and creativity regardless of their current ability level.

The cool thing about the internet is that you also have the resources to publish things online and to get feedback from people that you may have never met. The open source software movement encourages peer feedback and contributing to projects. It’s pretty amazing with how cool this community is.