If you are a professional developer, you are likely to encounter many different technical challenges, whether they are with your existing software product or with a new one. These challenges can be handled in different ways: by studying, experimenting, or following a set of best practices. This post will introduce you to the first one.
Software developers tend to focus on development, but the reality is that there are many other parts to the software development life cycle. For example, a good software developer will be aware of security, development tools, OS issues, and how to work with others.
If you’re a software developer, you know that sometimes you need to do something you don’t particularly like (like writing a blog post). Still, you know it is good for the organization (like speaking at an industry conference with or without your boss present). These are the times when you have to be the most flexible and make the best decisions for your team, business, or organization.
Today’s software is complicated, and it’s getting more so. That’s why it’s critical for software developers to think about designing their applications for the long term.
Here are some best practices for software developers:
- Make use of a variety of resources to check code
One of the most common complaints against open-source software is that it is difficult to read and debug. This is because code written by different developers uses different styles and often appears to be unrelated. It is not very difficult to fix when code is written by one person, as they will use the same style. But when many developers write code, it is very difficult to determine when code is not performing according to expectations. This is where a variety of resources can be used to check code.
- Establish your minimum viable product
Our life as software developers is constantly evolving and changing. The better you understand the challenges and opportunities of the technology industry as a whole, the better you can become at building products that bring value to your customers.
- Constant Testing
Recently, I’ve been thinking about automation and testing concerning automated testing and continuous integration. I’ve been thinking about how we can be more consistent with our testing and how automated testing helps us find bugs and problems early in the development process. I’ve been thinking about the benefits of an automated continuous integration process and how we can make it even more effective.
- Set a practical time and budget approximation
Setting a time or budget approximation for writing software is a tough decision. Depending on what you’re working on and what your schedule looks like, you may choose a target time based on a typical software project or a realistic one based on your schedule, experience, or skill level. By choosing a time that’s too ambitious, you may spend too much time trying to achieve the impossible and not enough time completing the project. By choosing a time that’s too realistic, you may forget about other important goals, such as learning new skills, finishing projects that are critical to your career, or dealing with the problems that arise from unrealistic schedules.
- Make code simple and true
This one goes hand-in-hand with the above goal and is also aimed to improve the consistency of the developer community. The above goal is aimed at developers and their employers; the goal here is aimed at the community. We think good software and code are more important than good marketing, so we’ll focus on the code.
The modern software developer exists in a world of increasing complexity. The core competencies of a good developer are becoming more important and more complex, while a good developer also has to have deep knowledge in various technical areas. This can make it hard to find time to get the most out of our time. This post will share some of the practices I have used over the years to keep my productivity high.
Over the last few years, the software development industry has experienced rapid growth in terms of the number of software developer jobs and the amount of infrastructure necessary to support them. It’s been said that “software eats the world,” and this is a very apt analogy. However, as is the case with any finite resource, the software is only efficient when it is utilized efficiently.