How I Code

Fundamentals

There is a never-ending torrent of technology and information screaming for your attention, insisting that without it, you are an inferior developer, incapable of doing anything of value.

It is not so.

Knowing Python's file APIs, understanding the vagaries of MySQL configuration, grokking C's dereference operator - these are valuable skills, but they are not essential to writing software. They apply only to certain tools.

A small set of fundamental skills, however, are useful in all software projects, regardless of environment or tools. You need not be an expert in any of these to make valuable contributions, but learning any of them will make you much more effective. These are the essential skills in writing software, the ones you should spend years mastering and refining:

Caring for users
Understanding problems deeply
Listening
Reading
Writing
Speaking
Triage
Learning new tools
Learning from mistakes
Experimenting
Naming
Data modeling
Using programs
Documenting programs
Writing maintainable programs
Adding features to programs
Removing features from programs
Removing errors from programs
Improving program internals
Designing interfaces
Designing algorithms
Editing text
Optimizing programs

Articles

Caring For Users
—
If a program runs in a forest but no one sees the output...
Debugging Programs
—
Once you have understood a problem, it is nine-tenths solved.
Understanding Problems
—
To understand problems, you must understand understanding problems...