The Habits of Great Developers

By Tom Henricksen

Developers want great results and must focus on the small habits.

Don’t you wish someone asked great developers how they do it? Tom Henricksen has reached out to leading coders and compiled their advice into one place.

Here are some of the people whom he worked with:
David Farley
Woody Zuill
Doc Norton
GeePaw Hill
David Neal
Andrew Stellman
Luca Rossi

Tom has distilled down the small steps that lead to a great development career.

Learn how to:
Stop the memory overflow
Understand technical challenges
Collaborate and reflect for better pairing and mobbing
Small steps create big leaps

Learn how to use these habits for a stronger career!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Henricksen
• Release date: Feb 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9798215826294

Tom Henricksen

Coder. Speaker. Power Skill Enabler.

Book preview

Tom Henricksen

The Habits of Great Developers

The little things that can set you apart

First published by Code Is Easy Publishing 2023

Copyright © 2023 by Tom Henricksen

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

First edition

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

Find out more at reedsy.com

This book is dedicated to my family. Jess, Ella, and Matthew: you make life fun!

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgement

1. Starting Your Journey

2. Engaging the learning process

3. Stop the Memory Overflow

4. Programmers Know the P-Word

5. Surprising Developer Habits

6. Legendary Developer

7. Avoid the Error Conditions

8. Take a Day Off

9. The Curious Developer

10. The Developer Doctor Is In!

11. The Creative and Funny Reverent Geek Weighs in on Developer Habits

12. Daily Deliberate Practice

13. Coding With Ron Jeffries

14. By George, I Think He’s Got It

15. Tips from Otter

16. Do You Do This First?

17. Collaborate and Reflect

18. Chris Teaches the C-Word

19. You Can’t Really Code Until You Can Explain It

20. Direction From Daniel

21. Ask More Questions

22. The Developer Checklist

23. Applying the Habits

About the Author

Preface

At first, I wasn’t sure I was cut out to be a software developer. My initial career transition was from sales. I haven’t met many people who have made a similar transition.

I felt like an impostor. Or, as kids used to say, a poser. (Do kids still say this?) I tend to get in my head and overthink things.

Although a great anecdote to that is action. Once I jumped into my first internship and full-time work, I enjoyed the challenges.

Lost

After almost ten years, I looked up and thought, Is this all there is? I felt lost in my work. There wasn’t the initial challenge I enjoyed with problems that were fun to fix and with lots of learning along the way.

I thought there was something big missing from my career as a software developer. There wasn’t a major triumph that I could think of. I have never had a singing angels moment.

Consistency

As a voracious reader, I looked for answers. My mother bought my brothers and me a copy of The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines Into Massive Success by Jeff Olson for Christmas.

My mother was an Iowa Hawkeye football season ticket holder. That year the team went 12-0. When the team was asked why, they said the whole team read The Slight Edge before the season. For Christmas, she picked up a copy for each of her three boys.

The main takeaway I got from reading this book was the power of consistency. The author went from a beach bum to a top sales representative by applying practices daily. I began to examine my day. Then I applied some of the principles to my career.

Habits

Later, I picked up a copy of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear. I started to see where many people used daily habits to change their life.

What about software developers, I wondered? Did they have habits they should leverage? I started asking around.

That is how I have come to write this book. My quest was to find the little things that can turn every day into a masterpiece of productivity.

I reached out to many different software development experts. Some I met through hosting online events. Others, I ran into by following their blogs or reading some of their books. Primarily, I reached out to them via email. I am grateful for their responses and advice.

One specific thing I noticed from lots of these experts was to focus on small steps. This helped me immensely. When I initially started development I tried to see the completed process.

Now