Top Learning Habits for Developers To Follow:
The software development industry is very dynamic. Continuous change and the introduction of new concepts are a part of this field. Therefore, learning habits should also be a part of a developer’s professional journey.
If you are a developer then you must be an adapter of changes. With a dynamic approach, you can easily reach the success point. The rigid approach can ruin your career.
About 75% of dedicated developers respond to new techniques learning at least every few months or once a year. This shows how rapidly new concepts become part of the work.
Top Learning Habits for Developers to Follow:
High level plan implementation:
You might hear that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. The same applies to learning.
Most of the developers plunge straight into active learning. With the rapid learning vision, they forget to focus on one point. Additionally, it overwhelms and creates confusion also.
Instead of this, it is better to focus on learning one thing at a time. You can make a plan for the same. Many of you are finding the answer to how to improve developers skills. Making a high-level plan is a part of the answer.
Make sure you include the S.M.A.R.T milestone that is as follows.
Specific: It is better to set a particular milestone instead of a generic goal.
Measurable: Quantifying the milestones to let you know where you are and how far you are from your milestone.
Attainable: It is good to keep ambitious goals, but they should be realistic. You can break down an ambitious goal into an actionable task with milestones. It will increase the chances of achieving your milestone.
Relevant: Ensuring that your milestones are relevant to the overall goal.
Timely: It represents the deadline for the tasks you set out to reach your milestone.
Blocking Out Learning Time:
The successful and unsuccessful people are poles apart in terms of their approaches to goals. Successful people set aside time every day to work on things.
The first and crucial step is the dedication and discipline of your learning. Also, you need to set a time aside in the beginning. This will help in creating the learning habits in the development sector. It will be easy for you to prioritize urgent activities without a dedicated time set.
Focus on What You’ve Learned:
A high-level plan with milestones is good. However, there is a need to track progress also.
You can effortlessly review the progress once a week or a month. After that, compare it with your timeline. It will help you in justifying growth.
This will let you check against your high-level plan. This is a crucial step on how to develop learning habits.
Revise the past skills that you already learned. Examine whether those skills are helping you in achieving your milestone or not. If you lack something then cover that shortcoming.
Learning in Public:
A new trend is #buildinpublic among the entrepreneurs. Some of them also refer to it as a new movement. The basic concept is progress sharing on different social media platforms.
You will be able to get others’ feedback on the same by sharing the progress. This will also help in building the learning moments.
The ultimate result will be the opening of new opportunities. You can easily connect with professional and minded individuals. Also, you will be able to link with potential employers. It is one of the important habits of highly effective developers.
Making Notes:
Many people forget to make notes of tasks they need to execute. You might have used this technique in your old school days to remember the homework you need to do. Unfortunately, this habit ends when they enter the job world.
Some of the merits of taking notes are as follows:
- Helps in the retention of information or recalling
- You can easily differentiate between the main idea and key point
- You will better understand your ongoing learning process.
The note-taking concepts for developers are as follows:
- Take appropriate systems like the mind map system, Cornell system and classification system.
- The Cornell system is good for taking notes while watching tutorials, books and podcasts listening.
- The outline system is ideal for classifying information based on heading, sub-heading and list.
- You can use a mind map system for deep research on the topic.
Making notes is one of the foremost habits of successful software developers. It might sound small, but its effect is large.
Cheers of Small Victory:
The habit of celebrating small successes is like self-indulgence. It is one habit that brings all other habits together. Finally, it creates an impact on the career.
It doesn’t matter whether your victory is small or big. They equally motivate you regardless of any dimensions. You must celebrate every small moment that makes you closer to the milestone.
Tinkering and Having Fun:
Many people find it hard to stick to good habits for long periods. It is because there is a lack of fun and enjoyment.
Practically, it is tough to get into discipline. As humans, we love fun. So you need to integrate the same.
From my point of view, there is nothing better than running a code successfully. The kind of enjoyment also varies depending on the type of profile.
For new backend developers seeing data saving into a data store will be fun. For frontend developers, the fun will be a new application working well in the browser.
Verdict:
None of the corporations will follow the spoon-feeding concept for your progress. You only need to make efforts to reach your success through your learning habits. As a professional developer, you must be aware of all the latest technologies. Only this approach will help you in giving your world-class software development services.
Keep in mind that you need to be a good developer rather than just a developer.
