Summary of a Tech Book Compiled by Hashnode

Hi there,

I was opportuned to read a great book: Better Dev 2021 compiled by Hashnode.

You must have been told severally that reading, as a developer is essential for improvement. After reading the book, I was able to get familiar with some terms and it increased my knowledge as It majorly consisted of experiences from professionals.

Here, I will be basically summarizing the book and pointing out the things I learnt from the book.

The book is divided into 6 core parts.

1. Developer Essentials.
2. Learning hacks and productivity.
3. Contributing to open source.
4. Technical writing.
5. Landing a job
6. Resources and tools to use.

Developer Essentials covers the essential advice and tips for those who are getting into web development. Top 5 Pieces of Advice for Aspiring and Learning developers.

• Write code and build stuff: Tutorials are great but putting what was learnt from a tutorial into practice makes it better. You do not necessarily have to wait till you get a big project; you can start building something based on your “simple ideas” and get better from there. One of the other benefits of building out a few sample projects is that you can use them on your portfolio.

• Do things at your own pace and focus on what you enjoy: It is common to get overwhelmed when you first get into tech. Whenever you start your journey, do things at your own pace, make sure you understand a concept before moving to another and make sure to let yourself enjoy the things you work on.

• Invest in yourself and the community: Make intentional efforts to improve yourself. If you think you need to improve your technical skills, find tutorials or courses online and practice. Whatever aspect you think you need you need to improve yourself on, search for resources you can use to help improve those areas. Join tech communities and attend tech events.

-Financially invest in yourself: You won’t get everything for free. Sometimes, you just have to spend money on the resources you need. Don’t be too cheap! If you need to pay for the resources that will help to improve your career, then do so.

• Create your own content: You can share what you’ve learnt with others through blogs, videos, or articles.

5 things a Developer must have to keep them informed, increase their productivity and help them excel in their career.

• An Editor preferably VS Code.
• Blogging: It allows you to share your technical knowledge and experience with the developer community and also improves your learning on every topic you write.
• A strong Github Profile.
• Browser Extension to stay updated with the latest programming publications.
• Task Manager e.g Trello

Web Developer Roadmap

Web development is the process of building software that runs on a separate computer somewhere in the world and the result you get is a million lines of codes sending something back to you.

To become a web developer, the author broke the process down into three parts:

Firstly, learn the foundation of web development which is HTML and CSS. Get familiar with the fundamentals of web development and create your first project. You can do this for 3 months.

Secondly, do online Boot camps to improve your problem solving skills and also build more projects on your own. This can go on for a month.

Thirdly, the third step is very important. Take your learning to the next level, start doing advance CSS and JavaScript.

How to learn to code

Python is the language most people to people that just want to start programming but if python is not your thing, you can start with other languages. Programming languages have common logics and flows, so if you learn one, it becomes easy to learn another one in the future.

Knowing more languages does not make you a better programmer, it is better to be proficient in a few languages.

You can start programming with whatever tools you have. So far it is a modern computer, all you need is an internet connection, a text editor, and the zeal to learn and push through any challenges you face.

There are a lot of resources online where you can learn how to code, ranging from general programming to web development. You can choose anyone that works for you.

Things any developer should know

• As a developer you must be updated on each framework you work with.
• Test your codes before production.
• Ask questions about things you are not clear about, do not assume anything.
• Everybody is motivated by different things in life. Figure out what motivates you and do not bite more than you can chew.
• Failure is inevitable. There are lots of frameworks and tools to learn. The things is, when learning something new, there is great chance that you will make a mistake, so when you fail, try to figure out the cause of the failure and try again.
• Imposter syndrome: There will be points in your career where you will feel irrelevant and you compare yourself with other developers, when such happens, take break and remind yourself of yourcaccomplishments.
• Don’t Repeat Yourself: Don’t write code that does the same thing twice. This way, you reduce repetition in your code and also complexity.
• Write clean code: A clean code is simple, readable, focused and it is tested. A clean code does not give the reader unnecessary details. There is no repetition in clean code and it can be reused.
• Always be a team player.
• Get mentored by someone or if you can mentor someone, do it.
• Read non-tech books also.
• Take care of your mental and physical health.
• Create time for your family.

Learning Hacks and Productivity

Notion is an amazing tool that helps you organize your works and you can adjust it to all your needs. It can be used as an activity tracker, money manager and even a diary. You can save some saved articles and links in the app. It can be used to take down notes like your ideas for a project.

How to stay updated as a developer

• News Aggregators for example daily.dev can help to keep you updated with the technology world.
• Subscribing to newsletters is a great way to get lots of important information sent to your email.
• Blogs: In blogging platforms, you can discover more authors and wide range of topics.
• Social media is also a great platform to get updated. You can follow as many platforms to get updated about the tech world.

How to ask Effective questions

The Read Search Ask Method:

• Read the error or documentation
• Search Google or Stackoverflow
• Ask for Help

Read the error or documentation Many developers ask questions without understanding the problem. The first thing to do when trying to find a solution is to understand the problem. Reading through your code multiple times can help you identify the problem and the solution too, but if the bugs are too complex than your capacity, you might need to read some documentation. Documentation is an official guide of a particular programming language, framework, library or technology.

Search If you have read through your code and documentation but you are yet to fix the bug, you can try the Search method. You can search the internet for the solution to the bug and the paths the problems are related to. If your bug is related to python, add it to your search. Copy and paste your errors; there is a high chance that someone else has encountered that same error and has written an article or made a video about it.

Ask If you have tried both methods above but you’ve not gotten the solution to the bug, you can ask for external help from a mentor, senior developer, team lead, local community, group or a friend. Before you ask, make sure to have completed step 1 and 2 and you have understood the question effectively.

Contributing to Open Source

This part covers how contributing to open source can help you grow as a developer.

Open Source: Is a software, project or community where people can share ideas on how to improve the software, project or community because it is publicly accessible. Open Source software is a software that the source code is publicly accessible to others who would lie to alter, copy, learn, or share it. Examples of Open Source software and languages are: Linux Operating system, Android by Google, Firefox browser, VLC Media player etc. Some benefits of contributing to Open Source projects are:

• It helps you improve your skills.
• You get to collaborate with amazing tech personalities all over the world.
• You get recognized for contributing to something unique.
• You can draw inspiration from and meet like-minded people.

How to contribute to open source projects as a technical writer A survey carried out by Github in 2017 shows that the major problem encountered in an open source project is incomplete or confusing documentation. As a technical writer, you can contribute to open source projects by fixing the documentation issue.

How you can contribute as a Technical Writer Firstly, find a project you can contribute to. There are many open source projects you can contribute to, so find the one that is most suitable for you. Secondly, identify an issue to solve. Most Open Source projects already have some issues while others don’t. If you happen to work on an Open Source Project that has an existing issue, notify the maintainers of your interest in the project and if the project you want to work on does not have any documentation issue, try to identify how you can improve it.

Thirdly, send a pull request. Make sure to study the style with which the pull requests are expected to be sent and follow it but if there isn’t a style, a common style guide is to:

• The page should always reflect the content of the page.
• Always define what the page is about in the first paragraph.
• Consider your audience.
• Avoid duplicating.

Technical Writing

This part shows how technical writing improve your learning and also help you improve as a developer.

How to Write Consistently

• In order to write consistently, you need to start writing.
• Make writing a habit. A habit is something that is done regularly and is hard to give up.
• Find something that motivates you to write.
• Celebrate your small wins.
• Make plans, think ahead.
• Have fun while writing.
• Take enough breaks.
• Do not rush to publish articles. Work with your frequency.
• If your article gets negative comments, revisit it take not of what went wrong and do not get demoralized.
• Be a part of a community. Develop a Writing Style It is important to have a writing style because it reflects your personality and personal brand.
• Diction refers to the author’s choice of words.
• The way the words are arranged in a sentence is very important as it shows where the emphasis of the sentence is.
• The tone of a writing or the feeling your readers get from an article is equally important.
• Use images for representation. How to develop a writing style
• Keep writing in order to keep improving.
• Understand what you want to write before you start writing.

Why a Dev Should Start a Blog

• It helps a dev to improve their communication skills.
• It helps with time management.
• It helps you to learn from other through feedbacks.
• It will help to increase your visibility in the job market.

Landing a Job

This part highlights what other successful engineers did to secure a programming job.

• Build your portfolio.
• Be prepared for the interview.
• Be confident during your interview.
• Get feedback from professionals.

In conclusion, do things that will help you improve personally and career-wise. I hope this article has helped you in one way or the other.

In case you are interested the book, the link to get the e-book is posted below.

drive.google.com/file/d/1vwFaFf0OjTGpoLCaB…

Thank you for reading.