A successor in spirt to our 7 tips for every person wishing to be a software dev, here are 8 tips for when you finally land your first development job.
These tips will hopefully help prepare you for your new job, or help get you up to speed with the rest of your team.
1. You Don’t Know Anything
So you finally have your degree and after four years of intensive studying you think you know everything there is to know about programming.
Like every other developer you will soon learn (or already have) that you know nothing.
Be humble, put in your hard work, and know that over time you will learn.
2. Ask Questions
As you come across bugs, or areas of code that you don’t understand, ask a developer on your team for help or an explanation. Make these questions opportunities to learn, don’t just ask what a section of code is doing, but why it was written the way it was.
3. Study Up
If you have free time at work or home, use it to learn about a concept you are having trouble with.
Talk to other developers, look at code examples, Google it, read a book, or ask AI like ChatGPT. (Author note: maybe start a blog and let everybody know what you have learned)
4. Don’t Break the Build
Everybody is guilty of it, but whenever you check your code into the repository make sure it is in a compilable state, there is nothing more frustrating to a developer than to get the latest code from the repository only to find out it doesn’t work.
A reputation of breaking the build is not one you want to gain.
5. Learn Shop Standards
Every shop has a different way writing code and/or fixing problems.
Take time to learn how your shop behaves.
While it may had been ok to constantly restart the server when working on a project in school, it probably won’t fly with your coworkers.
6. Comment When You Check In Code
When you check code into the repository make sure you say why you are checking it in. This can greatly help when attempting a fix a bug that has recently been introduced into the code base.
The more descriptive the better, but even a simple “Fixing issue #123” or “Fixed login bug” is far better than nothing.
7. It Has Probably Already Been Done
Every business has industry specific issues to deal with.
For example data may need to be in a certain format before it can be inserted into the database.
So check with other developers or look through the code base to see if a solution already exists to a seemingly common business requirement.
8. Learn About the Industry You Are In
Understanding the needs of the users that will be using the application(s) you are working on will help save time by catching poorly written or counter-intuitive business requirements.
Just like developers have QA to catch the mistakes we make, developers must occasionally catch the mistakes of business rule writers.
