Book Image

Developer Career Masterplan

By : Heather VanCura, Bruno Souza
5 (1)
Book Image

Developer Career Masterplan

5 (1)
By: Heather VanCura, Bruno Souza

Overview of this book

Written by industry experts that have spent the last 20+ years helping developers grow their careers, this book offers invaluable insights and guidance tailored to the specific needs of technical professionals. By discovering the secret of continuous learning and adapting in the ever-evolving field of software development, you’ll explore various learning paths with formal and informal methods, as well as gain an understanding of the value of certifications to validate your skills. This book will teach you the significance of building a strong support network, holding crucial conversations, and taking ownership of your career growth. You'll delve into acquiring both soft and hard skills, becoming a well-rounded and sought-after developer. Packed with practical examples, stories of successful developers, and real-world applications, the chapters will equip you with actionable advice on how to push beyond your comfort zone and embracing communities to enhance your teamwork abilities. Additionally, you’ll uncover the benefits of joining open-source projects, speaking at conferences, and building a personal brand to amplify your visibility and reputation. By the end of this book, you'll have a well-laid-out long-term and short-term plan for your career progression, equipping you with advanced technical skills, strategic thinking, and the ability to effectively manage relationships within your organization.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Part 1 The Basics: Learn and Practice the Technical Skills
7
Part 2 Get Involved: Participate in the Community
13
Part 3 Create Impact: Share and Lead

Writing code

Writing code is the skill most associated with software development. It is no doubt the most visible result of your work and the thing that most people associate with contributing to open source. This makes many developers imagine that to practice this skill, you need to write code from scratch. That can work, but it is not the best way. You also need to write code that you can compare with other code.

Refactor code

To really use open source to improve your code-writing skills, you can refactor code. You first use refactoring to understand code better. By breaking down its parts and understanding what each part is doing, you will have a clear vision. You can then try to refactor the code to make it more readable, more efficient, or cleaner. When doing these exercises, you probably will not even contribute the changes back to the projects and just use them to improve your skills. This will help you contribute to the project in the future, since you will better understand...