Turnleaf Design Ramblings of a junior developer

7 tips for every person wishing to be a programmer

If you are interested in pursuing a career in software development these tips could help make the road to accomplishing that goal a lot less bumpy. Below is seven tips that can help prepare you for a career in software development and make the first few months a lot less painful.

1.Don't accept the minimum – You get minimal returns from minimal work. You're not just going to school to get a degree so you can get a job, but to get an education so you can actually do that job. After completing a project look for ways you can improve upon your work and/or expand on the scope of the project.

2.Learn from a code guru – Be it a professor or someone else, if you know a capable developer take time to learn from him/her. Don't just blithely look at the developer as someone to find the bug in your code, but a means to writing better code. There are also plenty of good forums out there, such as this one for Java developers

3.Be multi-lingual – Don't pigeonhole yourself into only knowing one programming language, learn a couple of languages outside your college curriculum. I would strongly suggest Java and C# as both are widely used in industry. Other good ones would be C++ and PHP.

4.Learn how to use the debugger – Understanding how to use the debugger that comes built-in to virtually every IDE will save you countless hours of frustration. For those who use Eclipse I would recommend these video casts.

5.Learn how to work in a team – Working as a team in software development introduces new dynamics. Often projects are dependent upon other projects and if one of projects you depend doesn't work you might find yourself incapable of dong work. There are also issues that arise from working on the same code file concurrently. Having experience in this area can be very helpful and potentially avoid ugly situations with your co-workers. I would also recommend looking into using version control software when working in a team.

6.Do projects on the side – Showing you have done work outside of the classroom not only shows you are a motivated developer, but it will also goes a long ways towards fleshing out your knowledge. This could be a good opportunity to learn how to work in a team.

7.Get an internship – Work with your university (or your own personal connections) to get an internship. Many companies see internships as extended interviews so this is an excellent way to get your foot in the door. Don't limit yourself to only development internship positions either, I worked as a QA intern prior to obtaining my development job.

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