4 ways to become a better developer

Being a developer means you’re working in a field that is constantly evolving. To advance in this field, developers should keep improving their skills. If you’re looking forward to become a better developer, master your skills, and stay up-to-date, these 4 ways are a good start.

1. Practice, practice, and practice

Practice is the key to become better at anything. The more you code and the more projects you work on the better you’ll become at development. Practice makes you experiment with the theory learned and changes your way of thinking. Also, you become much faster at solving problems and getting stuff done.

When practicing you’ll do a lot of mistakes. This is the way you’ll learn. The more mistakes you do the more experience you’ll get and the faster you’ll become at solving problems.

Don’t repeat the things you already mastered, instead, do things you’re uncomfortable with. Push yourself out of your comfort zone and work with challenging projects. This makes you grow and gives you experience.

Set part of your time to practice, daily if possible. Practicing a little but continuously is better than practicing a lot at one time and doing nothing for long periods.

2. Self-learning

Teaching yourself is the way to improve your skills and become a better developer. Learning sources vary from books to online tutorials and videos. Find the topics you lack knowledge in and search for good resources on them. Put some time every day for learning.

Also, try to learn the basics in every field. For example, even if you want to specialize in mobile development, it’s a good idea to know the basics of web development too. Learning the basics in different fields opens many more opportunities for you and you can then go deeper in a different field more easily when needed.

The most important part of self-learning is to apply what you learn. You won’t truly learn until you experiment with what you learned. This is about practice again.

3. Learn from others

Learning from other developers is good practice. Many developers took the same path before you, and taking their advice will help you a lot and save you tons of time.

Learn from open source projects, read other people’s code and try to understand it. Learn how other developers think and the algorithms they used.

Look for answers online and how others solved similar problems to yours. Don’t be afraid to ask, everyone was once a beginner, and you’ll be surprised how many developers like to help!

4. Get involved

Social media can be a great place to start. Follow other developers and join their communities. Share your experience and engage with others in discussions. You’ll find tons of ideas there and you’ll make good connections with developers worldwide.

Participate on stack overflow, forums, and online communities. You can learn a lot from the discussions there. Knowing the problems and issues, how to approach them, and how to find solutions are a great practice to become a better developer.

Aside from the online world, join conferences and events near you. There you can learn new skills and keep your knowledge up-to-date. Join conferences to meet great leaders in your field, ask questions, and discuss topics you’re interested in. Networking is an important reason to join these events where you meet fellow developers and have the opportunity to share ideas, best practices, and learn from each other experience.