The average salary for a software developer in the US is just under $120,000. That makes this field a particularly lucrative one, especially considering that you don’t need to have a degree to start a career in this field, and more importantly, you don’t have to do it 9 to 5. You can make a career around software development sitting at home.
This post is about the top 5 tips and tricks that can help anyone start a career in software development. This is a generalized piece of advice and does not apply to any specific language. If you want to be a better developer, this can help.
Languages are not Everything
Please don’t get this wrong, programming languages are important as they are the means of communicating with the computer, but they are not the most critical part of being a developer or learning software development.
You can start your programming journey with Java, Python, C++, or any other language but can eventually switch to another as the difference between programming languages is not that huge. What’s important is developing the logic that gets the job done. Once you get a hold of that, you can develop in any language and even tackle interview questions in a language that’s alien to you.
You don’t even need to worry about which language is the most popular now or which one is expected to be the most in-demand in five years. Focus on developing the logic because you can always get help with the syntax, but the logic is what you need to create on your own when working as a developer.
Start with learning the core concepts of any programming language of your choice, like assigning variables, doing loops, data types, conditionals, etc. Once you’re proficient in that, all programming languages use almost the same concepts.
Beware of Open Source
As a developer, you cannot create all of your code on your own; you’ll be using a lot of other people’s work, aka open source. Now, open-source is a great way to decrease the time and effort needed to develop, but it does come with risks. You need to be aware of the risks of open-source software components before you use them in your code.
One of the things you can do to make sure that you are not compromising the safety and security of your code by using open source is always to use open source components from a credible source. Using a software composition analysis tool or a vulnerability scanner can also find and point out flaws in the open-source components you are using.
If you are at the very early stages of your journey as a developer and cannot afford to use any of that, you can always consult forums and find out what fellow developers say about the open source components you are about to use.
Practice Makes a Developer Perfect
There’s nothing better than practice to help you become a good developer. Most beginner developers don’t have anything to practice their developing skills. There’s a solution to that, suggested by Ronan O’Dulaing, the vice-president of engineering at Globoforce. He says, “Pick problems to solve, perhaps related to your home or your other hobbies, and use your chosen language to figure them out. There are lots of tutorials online to get you started.”
As a beginner, you don’t need to work on actual projects; you might not have any. Find any problem around you that can be solved with some lines of code and solve it. Keep doing that, and you’ll start getting a hold of the core concepts and logic of development. Once you do that, it will go a long way in your journey as a developer.
Learn to Develop Without an IDE
You’ll use an IDE when coding for a job, but not using one puts you in a difficult position and helps you learn better. It is way harder to write code without, say, Visual Studio. You’ll definitely spend a lot of time dealing with issues like indentation, imports, or syntax.
However, that will happen at the start; once you practice things, it becomes very smooth. This will also help you learn what the IDE is doing for you. Yor concepts of things like file organization in the file system, code compilation, and dependency management will develop.
The point is not to never use an IDE; that is not the practical approach. Once you learn to write the code in a text editor and get it to execute, you’ll be so much better at doing the same using an IDE.
Take it Slow
No matter which language you are starting with, you can quickly learn the core concepts, syntax, and data structure, but that is not enough. Take your time to get a hold of the language before moving ahead. If you rush and don’t fully understand the language you are learning, the holes in your knowledge will always haunt your career as a developer.
Software development is a vast field, and it is natural to spend time learning it. Rushing through it and being impatient will not do you any good.
Conclusion
Software development is a lucrative career to pursue, and the best thing is that the skills you need to make a career in this field can be learned very easily. If you are a beginner in this field, don’t mind the languages, you can start learning with any one of them and then switch if need be. You’ll be using many open source components as a developer so take necessary precautions when dealing with them. Practice as much as you can; it is the only way to become a better developer. Learning to code without using an IDE will hone your skills and knowledge. Last but not least, take your time and don’t rush with learning programming.
Now over to you:
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