What I have learned in 4 years of coding

Four years is maybe not a lot, but it is a good time to say that I have learned many things. There has been four years since I took my first job as a developer.

It is said that everyone has something to share, so I wanna do it with this bullet list of things I learned.

Patience is the key

I think one of, or maybe the most important soft skill that every developer should try to achieve is patience.

Gotta say that a developer will struggle with so many issueees that patience will be the best ally.

Remember that,

A big problem may get smaller with patience, but a small one, will become bigger without it. — a wise man say (me)

Falling on the valley of the despair will lead you to nowhere, so remember to be en calm, everything, one day, will be solved, you just need to keep trying with patience. **

Every problem on this world may have a solution, the ones with patience are the ones to fix them. (me again)

Impostor syndrom may not go

You know, do not matter what you do, the impostor syndrom will be there.

As I’d said, I’ve coding for 4 years and maybe it is not a lot. But belive me, it maybe does not matter how good you become in something, you will be having doubts about yourself time to time.

I do not have really and advice on this, I mean, I don’t feel even sure of writting this blog post. But let me tell you something, every time I feel this impostor syndrom is tackling me, and I feel that I’m not at good as people belive (Boss, coworkers, even love ones), at the end, everything goes well!

So, keep walking! Belive in youself, be patient.

Do not worry about what you don’t know. Instead, start thinking of what you can learn.

So, I gotta say that being a developer is synonym of being exposed to a lot of things that you don’t know.

I mean, take a look of all the new technologies that have been comming to the world. One day you are learning Angular 1 and then Angular 2 is released and it is very different. Or you have been coding all your life in Javascript and typescript comes up.

Dude, and there you have all the things that you know they are amazing but you do not have any clue of why. It can be overwhelming.

So stop worring about what you do not know, and start thinking in what you can learn.

Stop with the I do not know how to do it. Start with the I will learn how to do it.

Try new things.

In order to earn the bread, jeje, I work as a fullstack developer. I really enjoy it. I enjoy react, typescript and all the things I use. But belive me, learning new things, trying new technologies, is always refreshing and awesome.

And belive me, you never know when someting will become useful to you. So, never say no to learning something new, even if this is not tech-related.

Please do not say something like: “oh, I am sorry, I am not interested in kotlin, I only do web”.

Do not close doors that are not even opened!

Maybe one day kotlin will save your life! or at least, your job!

Try different ways to solve a problem.

One of the main issues that I see when someone is starting their career in coding is that they are, sometimes, stubborn as hell (in the bad way :p)

Being stubborn is good if that means ‘I am sure I will solve this”

But it is not so good it that means not trying different ways of solving something.

If you are facing like a blocker, and you do not know how to proceed with something, or a way of fixing something is not going as expected, or you cannot continue with that approach, TRY A NEW ONE!

This is one of the first advices I always do. Some things may not work, so try different ways to solve something.

I do not know if I explained myself but, there are different paths to achieve something. If you see that something is getting really complex to follow, try a new path!

It is not about programming languages, it is about solving things.

So, I want to start this with

Everything is at google!

And I am not talking about all the info that google have about you (just kidding, perhaps :p) but about the knowledge that it is already there.

What I am trying to say is that, if you know how to solve something, maybe you do not need to know a lot the language that you are going to use, because you can type at google python for syntax

It is true that knowing the language helps you a lot. But the programming language at the end is just a tool.

The best way to learn something, is to teach it. Everyone has something to teach and to share to the community, so, do not worry with things like:

• oh but, i am a rocky, i do not know anything.
• oh, people is going to laught

Everyone has something to share. And if you share your knowledge, you are helping the community but also, you are helping yourself.

Rest.

I do not have to say to much about this but dude, every muscle have to rest, even the brain. So, time to time take a break, be with the ones you love. Walk the dog to the park and do not be stick to the chair all the day all the days. (Yeah, I sound like your mother).

I hope all this tips helps you a lot. Please, if you have another one, share it!

Originally published at https://cacilie.github.io on April 18, 2021.