Successful software developers understand that technical skills and experience can only go so far. Habits play an essential role in their success. The habits reflect the skills and the background of the developer. Besides the work process and the languages they focus on, software developers cultivate a certain behavioral mindset and characteristics to improve their craft. While Forbes refers to software developers as the rising stars of the tech world, here are 5 habits every software developer should nurture.
Write Clean, Reusable, and Maintainable Code
There are various ways of writing clean code to make it easier to reuse and maintain. Regardless of the approach, writing clean, reusable and maintainable code is increasingly becoming an essential trait in the development of high-quality software. Usually, the best practice is to assign each function a single purpose. During development, it may be tempting to add several purposes to a single function.
Although it may seem easier to do so, it creates several problems. One, the code becomes difficult to read, reuse, and maintain. That’s why a function should do one thing only to avoid losing focus. Also, successful Dallas app developers assign variables and functions meaningful names to make it easy to use the one function one purpose rule. Usually, developers spend more time reading their code than writing code.
So, it should be easy to read and understand what the code is meant to do long after writing it. In a world where open source projects are gaining popularity, writing clean code is a good work ethic to make it easy for anyone to read the code.
Using Secure Coding Practices
In a world where hackers are increasingly exploiting virtually all vulnerabilities, releasing secure applications is becoming a priority for developers. To achieve this, developers write code in high-level language following strict security principles with the aim of avoiding potential vulnerabilities that can expose data. Writing secure code is more than writing, compiling, and releasing code in applications.
It entails creating a secure development based on a secure and reliable IT infrastructure that uses secure software and hardware. As more transactions take place online, security issues often arise from software causing serious consequences to individuals and businesses. Insecure coding practices, especially in essential industries such as transport, energy, healthcare, and finance, can lead to financial and property losses.
Every year, media outlets highlight how insecure software even among large organizations causes serious data breaches. Therefore, secure coding practices to follow in combating these threats. These include access control, enforcing strong encryption, and secrets management. For businesses that provide software to enterprises or consumers, trust is very valuable so losing it can affect their bottom line. Therefore, embracing secure coding practices is a top priority.
Understand How the Software Drives Overall Business
A lot of people can write software to cater to different business operations. However, a few grasp the big-picture necessary to understand why the business needs the software in the first place. Successful developers understand how a specific business operates, speak the business language and master how to translate business language into technology and vice versa.
In other words, great developers speak to the value of software in business terms in a way that the company and C-suite understand. Top-notch developers always seek to undertand the general objective, goals, and impact of software that transcends the role they play in software development. The crucial step to having a better understanding of how software contributes to the big picture is by focusing on the customer or user the same way tech giants do. Successful devs take full responsibility for what they deliver both to the user and the repository.
Ability to Adapt and Grow
A recent LinkedIn survey shows that developers spend more time learning new skills compared to other professionals. The study points out that 48% of software developers learned a new skill recently compared to 36% among other professionals. In software development, continuous improvement is not only a good practice but also a great trait for successful developers. Since software development is constantly changing, knowing more than one programming language, framework and IDE is a sure way of enriching a developer’s experience.
Interpersonal Skills
Often, software developers come across as professionals who perform better when working alone. The fact is that developers are part of an active ecosystem that includes other stakeholders, end-users, and business teams. Contrary to most beliefs, great software developers would prefer going to the office each day.
Being able to meaningfully collaborate differentiates great developers from good developers. As each piece of software development inches closer to automation, software developers are now spending a lot of their time strategizing and working with several stakeholders. All great developers understand this, that is why they focus on enhancing their soft skills alongside their technical know-how. To succeed in software development, great software developers are amazing team players with a positive attitude, good communication skills and a good understanding of the collaborative process that goes into the development of a product.
Besides communication and collaboration skills, great software developers develop empathy skills to understand the needs of software users and how the software will address them. Also, critical thinking skills are crucial since software development entails solving a number of problems. As such, software developers must have the ability to critically analyze situations and solve issues. Another trait great software developers nurture is leadership. Usually, new software brings changes to how things are done. So, developers have to lead from the front. Thus, the best developers cultivate leadership skills.
The best software developers not only enjoy creating cool things but also pick apart well-built things that function well to learn and improve. To accomplish this, they are enthusiastic collaborators who communicate effectively. Debugging code motivates them to perform even better. The bottom line is a great software developer is more than just writing code. Rather, it is about creating products and delivering value to the needs of the user.
Conclusion
Successful developers spend a lot of time mastering their craft since that is the only way to be a great developer. For some time, software developers have been misunderstood. This post shares 5 core habits that successful developers have in common. That said, to succeed in software development, it takes patience, sacrifice and discipline.