10 Tips To Become A Good Programmer

To build the solution, a mobile app, you need to first design or work with the designers to design the screen layouts. While designing screens, you want to get feedback from the end users before you actually start writing code. You may want to design screens that offer a no or low learning curve. If you keep that in mind, your end customers will be very happy.

Goal: Build simple and easy to use solutions.

Tip 3. Keep users engaged

Always keep in mind the business goals and remember that you’re building an app for its users, not for yourself. The better you understand your end users, the better the solution will be. To understand their needs and their behavior, you want to keep your users involved when building functionality and share with them and let them test drive it and get their feedback.

Tip 4. Be open minded

You don’t have to be always right. I can't count how many times I’ve seen developers arguing/debating about who is right. If there are multiple solutions of a problem, the best option is to put everything on the table and start reviewing their pros and cons and find the solution that is best for the business, not for you.

There are times when a young team member may offer a better solution. It often happens when senior team members do not upgrade themselves.

Tip 5. Upgrade regularly

Regardless of what language and framework you work with, they are always changing. Each year, there are several updates in software frameworks. You want to make sure to keep an eye on major releases and new features that may help you build better software and even save you time and cost. For example, writing a new application in .NET 6 may cost you much less than the same application writing in .NET 4.

Read and learn from product teams how they write code and how they implement best practices.

Tip 6. Copy but don’t copy

How often do you Google a keyword or a phrase and land on a page with code sample? You copy, make it work, and move on. Copying code is fine but one thing every programmer should do is, understand what and how the code is written and rewrite it in his/her own coding style.

There is so much code on the Internet that was written years ago. While the code may still work, you want to make sure that the code is written using the latest version of the software. For example, a string formatting sample in C# 2.0 is totally different than in C# 7.0.

Tip 7. Focus on quality and performance

Don’t just stop at "the code works”. Just because the code works, doesn’t mean you’re finished. The quality and performance of the code is equally or more important than making code works. The first step is to write code that works. Then you try to optimize it and then make sure you follow quality and performance best practices.

Tip 8. Keep it clean

Readable and clean code is very important for code maintainability. An average life span of a software application is 6 to 8 years. Large and complex programs with a million lines of code or more can usually last 12 to 14 years. During the life span of a software application, different programmers come and go. It’s the duty of a good programmer to write code that is easy to read and understand.

Tip 9. Keep it simple stupid

Some programmers love to make things complex. I used to have arguments with architects who would start with design patterns, build class libraries, and multiple projects in simple websites. If there is a simple way to do things and you don’t have to sacrifice the code reusability, delivery, and cost, go for it.

Don’t over engineer code that you may or may not be using in coming years. Remember, each custom software gets written every few years or so.

Tip 10. Test like a user

Testing your code is just as important for a programmer as writing code. So often, programmers deliver a solution and testers find bugs. The best software is tested by a programmer. And the best way to test your own code is, take off your programmer hat and put your tester hat on before you test your code.

Summary

In this article, I summarized some of my tips that I’ve learned over years working with software and writing code. I hope you found it useful. If you have any tips to share with other programmers, please post in the comments section.

Watch my discussion here with Joe G. on how to become a better programmer.