There’s no doubt about it. Software engineering as a continuously evolving and advancing discipline that often requires programmers to be equally steadfast in their advancement.
For new developers, perhaps those undertaking a self-taught journey or have recently joined or graduated from a boot camp, they will often look to the tech side of Twitter, Dev.to, and other communities for inspiration on how they can succeed in their new career; how they might become more employable and stand out from the crowd to find the success that they crave. Their efforts are not completely misguided – there’s plenty of fantastic information out there, and occasionally putting your ear to the wall can be useful in uncovering the latest trends and up-and-coming frameworks.
However, there is a sinister evil that lies amidst these communities. Many of those who garner large amounts of followers and engagement, those that quickly accelerate to the top of recommended lists and follow suggestions, are often nothing but charlatans. Of course, this isn’t all of them, but it’s many of them, and you might already know the kind of folk I’m talking about.
Those that are more social media influencers and link aggregators, than they are developers. They’ll post the same snake oil several times a day, the “learn x quick” tutorials, the free certifications, the secret tips and tricks that senior developers and industry moguls are purportedly withholding from you. Well, here’s my golden rule for handling just about anyone talking tech online:
Take anything from someone who has more time to tweet and blog than write code with a pinch of salt.
I know there are loads of exceptions and I don’t need a witch mob coming after me with raised pitchforks, the DevRels, the YouTube tech-bros, etc. I’m not really writing this article to ridicule those who produce content for other people. That would be the height of hypocrisy. The point I really want to drive home is that new developers often look to those with strong social media presence as those they should emulate.
Let me make it clear: The vast majority of software developers, especially the most senior and experienced ones, are almost certainly not cranking out amalgamations of no-code tools or the latest AI trends on Twitter. They’re almost certainly not writing article after article on Hashnode about the latest front-end libraries. They’re not doing any of these things.
You know what they’re doing? Well, funnily enough, the realistic answer is probably something not tech related. A senior developer friend of mine once told me that the more experienced developers get, the more they want to do non-tech things in their free time, perhaps tending to their vegetable patch, or perhaps playing golf. But, nevertheless, if they’re looking to upskill for an important new opportunity or they’re changing jobs? They’re writing code. If they’re not writing code, they’re reading code.
That’s the best way to get better. The talk about tutorial hell is a topic we can discuss on a different day, but the fact is, if you want to get better as a programmer, especially a green one, you should be coding. Find problems that you want to solve; things that you’re passionate about and want to resolve and figure out how you’re going to resolve it. Don’t sweat the details. Don’t worry about it being perfect; programming is an iterative process – you can make it better later! Grind Leetcode if that’s your thing!
Reading code doesn’t mean sitting with your nose in Modern Software Engineering by Dave Harley (though I highly recommend it). It means watching YouTube videos, or Twitch streamers, or even better, reading and understanding the source code of open source libraries and things that interest you. Many software engineers don’t realise it, but by reviewing their own code, and the code of their colleagues, they’re improving their own development and computational thinking abilities. It’s all nourishment for the mind.
I’d like to round off this rant by saying it’s not a bad thing to write blog posts, or to be engaged on social media if that tickles your fancy. Just don’t let it be a distraction. All the blog posts and followers in the world are not comparable to real-world experience.
So that game you’ve been thinking about? The portfolio site you want to build? The next generation social media and mobile app you know will change the world? Don’t wait until you’re more experienced, you should start now. The learning process happens by primarily by doing, secondarily by reading. Then and only then, consider writing a blog post about what you learned – we’ve got enough damn blog posts about the mystery of semantic HTML.