The lessons in this article will help new or mid-level developers understand what is needed to move up to Senior Software Engineer. These are lessons that I learned during my career that helped me in my own journey.
Hopefully, now they’ll help you.
One — There is no black magic or voodoo, just code
It was 2008 and I was staring at my monitor, completely stumped. I worked at a biotechnology back then which was all the rage in my area. I don’t recall the exact problem, but it delved into the internal workings of the .NET 1.1 framework.
As I was investigating this issue, I encountered an article that said the issue I faced was one of dark black magiks where mortals should never tread. Deep voodoo. It offered a workaround, and I took it.
This was a mistake.
For years after that, whenever I encountered a problem of high complexity, I would think “This is some black magic here.” And I’d look for a workaround.
Don’t make my mistake. There is no such thing as black magic or voodoo in software…
