3 min. read

Long ago I wrote an article on “Whats a good developer”.
Then I read articles and summarized my opinion on that matter:

If you have 20 minutes on your hand I suggest reading the article,
In this post I’ll summarize few aspects.

Courage - Lack of fear

The courage to change

I’ve experienced many developers that were afraid of change.
The whole mantra of “It works, why should we change it?”.
It is correct not to change what works but I can turn it around:

Find a reason to change your code.
Even if this code runs in production for 20 years.

Good developers will have the courage to test their code integrity and find the changes needed.
Without these developers, will still be running 90’s decade code.

Curiosity and Independence

How does it work?

When arriving to a new workplace you usually find experienced people that would guide you, teach you and show you around - If it is a good workplace.

What happens in the case of forgotten knowledge?
When there’s a service that was written long ago ad nobody knows how it exactly works?

Curiosity is a strong tool and curious people will use it to find the secrets of the forgotten knowledge.

Practical knowledge

Even a large ecosystem began in Hello World.

Practical knowledge are like books sitting on your shelf.
The more books you have - The more knowledge you have.

What can be described as practical knowledge?

How algorithm works.
How a structure is built.
How to implement a system.
How to deploy a server.
How Micro-services work.

These are just few examples - anything that practically help you write and deploy code helps you.

Writing

If you can’t explain it in simple words - means you don’t understand it.

If you can write it in your words, means you understand the topic.

My acquisition of knowledge is composed from these 2 concepts.
To fully understand something I need to know how to explain it.
You can do either:

Tell that to a rubber ducky!
Writing it down.

When I learn something new I write, document and explain it to myself by writing it down.
If I can write it in simple words I know that I understood the topic.
And If I can’t - that’s when I understand I don’t know something.

What kind of other aspects are there?
Join our Discord server and discuss!

Thanks for reading!