How to accelerate your growth as a developer

This is a topic that I’ve been studying for 7 years now, I was always very eager to learn everything in web development as soon as possible. It was and is very interesting for me, but as we all know, in web development there is a lot of things to learn, especially in such a fast moving industry something new is coming out everyday. So how do you keep up with this fast pace industry and accelerate your growth as a developer? In this post I will share with you my strategies to always be growing fast as a developer and staying on the top of your game.

1. Listen to podcasts

This I discovered quite recently. This is a great way of learning about development. Imagine listening to conversations of very smart developers, kind of a locker room talk, where they discuss everything they think and share all their golden nuggets. Well this is possible with podcasts. There are a lot of development podcasts on all kinds of development specialties.

How to find time to listen to podcasts? For me the easiest is listening to podcasts while commuting. I discovered that each day I spend about 2 hours commuting to work and studies. I realised that if I listened to podcasts all of this time, in 5 days (a working week) I could schedule in about 10 hours of podcasts. This is a lot. So in commuting time instead of listening to music you can feed your brain with valuable information about development, this will greatly accelerate your learning.

2. Listen to feedback humbly, learn from other developers

Wherever you work, there are probably developers that are way ahead of you or have more development experience. Always listen to their feedback humbly and be very thankful for it. To me it is magical when another developer that is way ahead of me is giving me a direct feedback on my code, this way I am able to learn from my mistakes and their advices.

Code reviews are especially helpful if your company has that, in this case a senior developer or a your peer can review all of your code and comment on it with advices on how to improve it. If you don’t have developers that are better than you in your environment — consider if this environment is optimal for your growth and if it still is, believe it or not, sometimes there is something to learn from younger developers as well, they are often times eager and know all the new stuff that just came out, so always stay humble.

Also be empathetic to other people. If there is a mentor, see how you can add value to their lives, don’t just take. Always be aware of what the other person is feeling, sense when it is the right time to ask a question. Don’t ask them questions that you can figure out by yourself. First google and try your best to solve it and if that doesn’t go well, go to them. They will respect that you did your best to solve it yourself.

3. Code as much as you can, do not be afraid of challenges

Of course the best way to learn is to practice constantly. Do the work that challenges you the most, do not be afraid of challenges, that’s the main source of learning for a developer. Google, ask, try, learn, repeat. Pay attention to where you can improve your code and make it more efficient and better.

4. Watch youtube videos, find online mentors

There are a lot of awesome channels on youtube. I learned a lot from there. Find a topic that interests you and learn. if you like the mentor, go follow them. Mentor is very important, because each person can relate to one mentor more than to other and that way one can learn way more by listening to a person that they like learning from.

5. Invest in courses

The best investment will always be in yourself. There are a lot of paid courses out there, where people put a lot of time and effort to make it worth your money. Look into this opportunity, never see it as an expense, see it as an investment that will pay off.

Of couse before enrolling in any course, make sure that it is something you need and want to learn. Also check out the feedback of people that already took the course, to make sure that it is good. Not all of the courses are good, you have to do the job of picking the right ones by doing a research about them.

6. Pick what to learn

Don’t learn everything, you don’t need everything, it is impossible to know everything in this industry. Do it step by step. Pick something that you find interesting and that you want to work with. Focus on that, learn it and move to the next thing. For example, if you’re looking for a job, you can see the job offerings and see what requirements do they have. Analyse the requirements and see what you need to learn, maybe it’s a new language or technology that you need to learn for your desired position. Take notes and learn that by watching videos, courses, developing in it and all of the points I’ve mentioned above.

Also be careful of trying to learn multiple technologies at once. Often it can be an overload for you and you will be lost between different concepts. From my experience, it is better to focus on learning one after another rather than all at once.

7. Use a linter

Depending on the language you’re using, make sure that there is a linter installed in your code editor for that language. It will highlight the code style mistakes and tell you that your code does not look as good as it could be (even though it functions well). Especially with JavaScript.

8. Develop a mindset of a lifetime student

Always be a learner, do your best to be humble in every situation. See what you can learn everywhere, sometimes you can learn what not to do. Always keep an open mind for new ideas, don’t immediately reject something you are sceptical about.

Conclusion

Here I outlined the most important points that helped me in my career and I am still learning everyday using those points. Hopefully that will help you to accelerate your growth. Thank you for taking the time to read this article, it means a world to me if I could provide value to you.