Tuesday, October 9, 2018

10 steps to become a java developer




You thought it was all about programming skills. But you were wrong! Excellent code is good, but commanding a better job and a higher salary depends on making sure that more people know who you are. In other words, you need to promote yourself. This is what seems to be successful.


Developer Tip # 1: Blog

Create a blog and post more than once a month. Really investigate and make sure you do not look stupid. Seriously, learn to write. Do the things that your elementary school English teacher taught you: create a sketch, draw a narrative, check grammar and spelling. Then, with great sadness, simplify it and shorten it to the point where someone who has scanned it has an idea of ​​what it is about. The Internet does not tolerate nuances (nor my editor).

Developer Tip # 2: Go to open source


Do not believe the lies about open source. It's possible the youngest among you may not remember the days when a developer might be unemployed, but even during the darkest recession periods, all the developers of the open source project I started went back to work fast. Just make sure that the open source it produces reflects the type of work you want. I wanted to solve difficult problems with the simplest possible solutions, but I interviewed developers who, as was clear in their open source, wanted to complicate simple problems. Believe it or not, there is a market for this, but make sure your code reflects the market you are on.

Developer tip # 3: Not six months, not 10 years


Do not change jobs every six months. Seriously, the end of 100 percent of the developer's job will come again. When that moment arrives, nothing else will persecute you that I work. On the other hand, do not stay in the same place doing the same for 10 years. You will be isolated and institutionalized. To remain valuable, you must be familiar with more than how to code the IBM stack while you are at IBM in IBM's way. I have not hired anyone who has been with IBM or any similar organization for more than a year or two. Normally, they impress me in the interview, but they do not pass the programming test.

Developer tip n. 4: Eye on the new stuff, hands on the practical


Exceptionally, young developers tend to work with brightness. Ruby is probably my favorite programming language, but it does not pay (on average) as much as Java, and the market is smaller. This may not always be true. Scala seems to be getting stronger, but do not be fooled by the size of the market, it's not here yet. On the other hand, do not stand still for so long that you are the future equivalent of a COBOL or PowerBuilder developer.

Developer Tip # 5: Write Your Own Documentation


I can not say how many times I worked on a project, just to attend an executive meeting because I wrote a document or a presentation that they saw and understood. I always start with an executive summary, ie the page you really need to read while the rest is reduced to details in case you do not believe me. The question is, what is a busy person supposed to know about it, if that's not the only thing he's working on? What most managers want to know: who can take it to term and will not tell me how it is? Write it this way.


Developer tip No. 6: Brevity is the soul


One thing that you learn about management immediately is that people who know what they are talking about tend to give shorter and more concise answers. When responses grow long and complicated, this usually means that they do not know or do not commit. You also learn that the tone is often inversely proportional to the importance of the subject. When the news is really bad, someone enters the office, closes the door and whispers. When something is not inherently important, but annoys someone anyway, he will try to raise its prominence with an inflammatory tone.

Do not be that guy. As for what you're talking about, find out how to summarize it and have the details, but do not load all the phrases with minutiae and do not create the hype - the sky is probably not falling (but maybe someone should take a look at Jenkins because we do not have a good construction in a while). When all else fails, lead with the money. Make sure your numbers are well thought out, connect them to graphs and clearly show that one point is superior to the other in dollars and cents.

Developer's Tip No. 7: Wow the crowd


Discover how to make presentations and learn to speak in public. Look for a subject and make at least one expert, if not the specialist. Presentations for the public are generally better if they are partly fun. Many embarrassing mishaps are necessary to develop that skill, but an engineer who can explain the matter in plain language to the administration and give a specialized conference on a topic will almost always get a higher salary than the one who does not.

Developer's Tip No. 8: Be realistic


Of course you like Erlang, but the Erlang market is not big. You should know more than one language, as well as new or new topics, but avoid immature statements like "I'm not going to code unless I'm in Erlang," unless you've really considered the business problems. You can pay to be a specialist with limited focus, but even that has a cost - you will be typecast according to your specialization, which can leave it high and dry when it is out of fashion. Of course, the NoSQL is the best fit for your small project, but the company does not invest in it for a small single system. The RDBMS will work well for it.

Developer's Tip No. 9: Solve difficult things, know the tools


Put in the time to learn some tools that other people do not know normally. What tools do you have that few know / use / understand and make you more effective than the people close to you?

For example, Aspect4j is not for everyone, but it is certainly for me. I use this for things that are wrong - very bad. I have rewritten the operations of the .class file to execute them in Tomcat instead of WebSphere, although the original source is missing. I have fixed the memory leaks in proprietary software. I have implemented the Wily Introscope of a poor man. At each point, it seemed like a kind of supergenius because I had a tool that few people had already touched - and I was worried about continuing when other people decided to wait for the vendor. I live / breathe eclipse.org/mat so you can not only fix the leaks, but tell what action struts and parameters caused your OAME. There are others, but these simple tools for complex problems give a developer a shine.

Developer's Tip 10: Practice Humility


This is the least common skill among developers. Sometimes this means that you have dirtier hands than you want. Other times, it means that you do not let your head go by when fixing a room. Geek fame comes and goes, but remember, it's what you've done recently that brings you inside. Next week, everything could have gone. In the words of Tyler Durden, "You are not special." Yes, trolls, I am fully aware of the irony.

 

 



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