Hacking your way to become a 10x developer, or even a 22x one
Is there really such a thing as a “10x developer”? You can check out the response to this question here: http://10x.engineer/. On the other hand, I believe we can all be 10x more productive than what we do today, or even more than that.
THE SECRET IS SIMPLE
Coding involves a lot of “trial and error” cycles. If we can have 10 times more cycles, we will be a 10x developer. If this is true, we can also be a 22x developers or even a 1,000x developers.
How can we do more cycles in the same amount of time? If you look at a typical coding day, you’ll notice we do a lot of repetitive tasks before we work on our actual task. If we’re building something new, compiling and loading the app takes time. If we’re debugging, reaching to that buggy state is wasted effort. If we’re working on a slow-to-start server than every cycle takes more time than it should.
What if we could skip these repetitive tasks and jump straight into the real work?
I believe that these “10x developers” are people who know how to “hack” things so they only work on their real tasks.
Here are some examples of where you can “hack” yourself more cycles:
- Programming the app to load in a specific state leads to faster testing cycles than loading the app and doing the actions needed to get to that state.
- Unit tests can be used for rapid programming. Instead of launching an app/server when you need to check if your code is doing what it’s suppose to. They run in a breeze and you can test your code 22x times more in the same amount of time. You also get testing of that features for life.
- When working on a client side app, use mock data instead of communicating with the server for zero networking.
- Use new tools for hot-loading and replacing code so you don’t even need to build/compile your application.
- Automate things that take time. Add shell aliases for tasks that involve multiple steps.
Less is more. The more we can reduce, the more cycles we can have. Any more ideas for hacking our way into being a 100X developers? Catch me on @ketacode
Originally published at berzniz.com.
