“If you can write code, you can change the world.”
Wednesday night I attended a meetup delivered by Greg Bauges, a developer evangelist at Twilio. His presentation, “What I Wish I Knew as a Junior Developer”, couldn’t be more relevant to where I am as an iOS developer.. so there was no way I wasn’t attending this.
The meetup took place at TechNexus, a growth incubator located in the heart of Chicago’s loop. There was a wide array of attendees, and I shared in some interesting conversation with a .net developer, a game designer, and even a fellow Mobile Makers alumnus.
You can tell Greg is passionate about building up Chicago’s tech community, and was extremely engaging throughout his presentation. Here are six points that really stuck with me:
Fear and Anxiety are Lying to You
Greg talked about “Imposture Syndrome”, and why so many of us will often feel like we’re not fully capable developers deserving of the jobs we’re pursuing. The reason for this, he argues, is because there is a tremendous amount of knowledge existent within the world of programming. And it’s always growing.
The reality is, no one will ever be able to know everything, and a large part of our job is being able to learn as we go along.
Some Days Your Brain Just Doesn’t Work
There’s even been a few times at Mobile Makers where I’d spend a few hours on a bug, and feel like I’ve made no progress at all. Then I’ll go to bed. Wake up the next day. And instantly solve it.
Greg said not to beat yourself up if your brain doesn’t seem to be working some days because it happens. Although it can be difficult at times to step away from a bug, sometimes that’s exactly what you need to do to solve it.
You Will Ship Bugs
“Your perfectionism is a result of your own insecurities.”
Perfectionism is quite the double-edged sword. For one, your striving for the best. But on the other hand, nobody can give you feedback if your product doesn’t exist.
Greg also reminded us that we’re building things that have never been built before. And how there is no blue-print, or one correct way, of accomplishing that.
My fellow cohort Blake and I had to overcome this with our visual note-taking app, SeeNote. It seemed like every we were thinking of new features to add and facets to polish. However, getting it up to the app store and on people’s phones would likely benefit the app in the long run than trying to perfect it and have it not exist.
Read Books!
As someone who majored in English, I loved hearing this. In today’s world, we’re constantly digesting text, whether it’s in the form of a tweet, text, or blog post. But actual books often contain the wisdom that sticks with us. He recommended two books in particular:
“The Clean Coder” by Robert Cecil Martin — a non-technical read on what is means to be a developer, and how coding only half the job.
“How to Win Friends & Influence People” by Dale Carnegie — a self-help book that has withstood the test of time since being published 1936.
Sitting behind a computer for most of the day, one can easily forget about the other dynamics that contribute to being a well-rounded programmer and overall person. Greg’s ability to humanize the profession of programming was an incredibly refreshing perspective.
