Becoming a more effective programmer is not quite simple and requires patience. Here are five tips that will guide you in improving your programming skills throughout your entire development career.
- Think and design before you implement
As a developer, create a prototype for your idea or solution first. A full-scale working model of an idea built for study and testing. This approach focuses more on the solution rather than the problem as you have to repetitively test each idea to see whether it’s the solution that will address a particular problem. Create first a physical and tangible design of the idea that will help guide you in implementing the solution.
Action tip: You may create a rough outline of the solution before applying it. This can be done on a piece of paper, whiteboard or even note-taking apps like Evernote.
- Divide your stories into small tasks
Breaking down stories into smaller tasks is a great way to improve your coding skills. It leads to more accurate estimates. Splitting stories facilitate you to be aware of the amount of work involved in a story and identify all the missing pieces. Use splitting stories as a tool for measuring your programming progress.
Action tip: Create Meaningful tasks. Explain the tasks in such a way that they convey the actual intent. For example, splitting up the stories into microtasks instead of saying coding. An example could be “Develop the login class” OR split the capabilities of the “sort and search” further; each will have its own story.
- Perform regular, laser-focused code reviews.
Code reviewing is the most commonly used measure for validating the design and implementation of an application. Regular code reviews will help you maintain consistency during the creation and execution of the code. Use laser-focused code reviews to reach a particular set of goals such as improving internal code quality, determining faults and generating solutions that will address bugs. Intense code reviews are a great way to improve your programming skills.
Action tip: Make use of your code review skills by going over the code in small parts (max. 300-400 lines at one time) to ensure that it’s readable and easy to understand by fellow developers, being aware of the most common security defects and ensuring the right encryption is used.
- Design a good quiet work environment.
Successful software development requires a quiet and organized environment. As a developer, you ought to create and work in a more silent and organized environment for the improvement of your programming skills. Start by organizing your desk; an organized desk promotes a strong work ethic and shows that achieving success is important to you. Quiet environments will facilitate your thinking in avoiding interruptions that affect the programming process. They provide you with time to think through the implications, possible consequences of an action and the best way to proceed which in turn increases the quality of the code.
Action tip: Put a do-not-disturb sign (when required) at the back of your chair or at the entrance to your office, use high-quality noise-cancelling headphones to block unnecessary sound when surrounded by people. Make sure to have an organised desk.
- Focus on code quality, not programming speed.
Your duty as a developer is to build code that possesses essential and distinguished attributes like being easy to understand by fellow developers and customers, well documented and can be tested. Therefore focus on building quality code rather than focusing on completing the code in the shortest time possible. Completing the code will not do you any good but focusing on the quality of the code is what will improve & increase the longevity of your programming skills.
Action tip: Upon accomplishment of the application, perform various manual code reviews and testing to ensure that the code will solve customer problems and meet the standards of the market.
Conclusion
Practice makes perfect. For the improvement of your coding skills, developers must practice the aforesaid tips like performing code reviews, creating quiet & organised work environments while focusing on the quality of the product. You should ensure that you’re leaving yourself enough time each day to improve your programming, even if it’s only 1% every day. Small incremental gains every day = big results over the long term.
