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Skill Up: A Software Developer's Guide to Life and Career: 65 steps to becoming a better developer
This is an all-purpose toolkit for your programming career. It has been built by Jordan Hudgens over a lifetime of coding and teaching coding. It helps you identify the key questions and stumbling blocks that programmers encounter, and gives you the answers to them! It is a comprehensive guide containing more than 50 insights that you can use to improve your work, and to give advice in your career. The book is split up into three topic Coder Skills, Freelancer Skills, and Career Skills, each containing a wealth of practical advice. Coder Skills contains advice for people starting out, or those who are already working in a programming role but want to improve their skills. It includes such subjects how to study and understand complex topics, and getting past skill plateaus when learning new languages. Freelancer Skills contains advice for developers working as freelancers or with freelancers. It includes such subjects knowing when to fire a client, and tips for taking over legacy applications. Career Skills contains advice for building a successful career as a developer. It includes such subjects how to improve your programming techniques, and interview guides and developer salary negotiation strategies. Jordan Hudgens is the CTO and founder of DevCamp, where he leads instruction and curriculum development for all the DevCamp and Bottega code schools around the US. As a developer over the past decade, Jordan has traveled the world building applications and training individuals on a wide variety of topics, including Ruby development, big data analysis, and software engineering. Jordan focuses on project-driven education as opposed to theory-based development. This style of teaching is conducive to learning how to build real-world products that adhere to industry best practices. Additionally, Jordan has published multiple books on programming and computer science along with developing training curriculum for Learn.co, DevCamp, and AppDev on the topics, namely Ruby on Rails, Java, AngularJS, NoSQL, API development, and algorithms.
- GenresSoftwareProgramming
302 pages, Paperback
Published July 31, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 24, 2019
This book has many little and easy to digest chapters. It is advice on working either a career or freelancing that could really is broad enough to cover all careers, not just programming. It is split into 3 parts:
Part 1: Coder Skills
This section is not so much about computer programming. It is mostly about learning and study techniques. He basically says that the common way of studying is ineffective in actually learning a topic, even if it is effective enough in passing a test. He gives some good advice on new study techniques and procrastination.
Part 2: Freelancer Skills
This section is centered around being a freelancer (this could translate to any kind of freelancer). He gives advice on things like: how to get yourself known, how to deal with clients, how to take over a legacy project, and when to ask for help, like bringing in a partner. This section does have more information geared specifically to coders and developers. A lot of it is about legacy projects. He talks about how tot deal with them. I don't know much about coding so I can't give an opinion on how helpful this info is (I'm reading with no knowledge because I'm proofing the audio version of this).I feel like this section is out of order. He has a couple of topics that each have multiple chapters. Instead of having all the chapter of Topic A first, then all of the chapters on Topic B, they are all mixed up. It makes it seem less repetitive, but it's a little annoying.
Part 3: Career Skills
This section starts off asking if coding is really what you want to do and basically says that you should do what makes you happy but is also practical. Then it goes on to tell you how to start coding and the best ways to learn and develop this new skill, including things like how to pick a specialty and programming language. The end of this section walks you through interview processes and resume building.
Part 1: Coder Skills
This section is not so much about computer programming. It is mostly about learning and study techniques. He basically says that the common way of studying is ineffective in actually learning a topic, even if it is effective enough in passing a test. He gives some good advice on new study techniques and procrastination.
Part 2: Freelancer Skills
This section is centered around being a freelancer (this could translate to any kind of freelancer). He gives advice on things like: how to get yourself known, how to deal with clients, how to take over a legacy project, and when to ask for help, like bringing in a partner. This section does have more information geared specifically to coders and developers. A lot of it is about legacy projects. He talks about how tot deal with them. I don't know much about coding so I can't give an opinion on how helpful this info is (I'm reading with no knowledge because I'm proofing the audio version of this).I feel like this section is out of order. He has a couple of topics that each have multiple chapters. Instead of having all the chapter of Topic A first, then all of the chapters on Topic B, they are all mixed up. It makes it seem less repetitive, but it's a little annoying.
Part 3: Career Skills
This section starts off asking if coding is really what you want to do and basically says that you should do what makes you happy but is also practical. Then it goes on to tell you how to start coding and the best ways to learn and develop this new skill, including things like how to pick a specialty and programming language. The end of this section walks you through interview processes and resume building.
January 30, 2021
This book was definitely useful for me. The author, Jordan Hudgens focuses on the mechanics of study and mastery, as it pertains to developers, but I found these study/skill-building habits were good for more anything broadly technical.
The most insightful thing the author hammers home in the text is the notion of "plateauing", which is when one gains enough mastery to feel relatively comfortable with a code process. Many people plateau, and than stop growing. This is a mistake, as in any technical domain, there is always potential to go deeper, and increase mastery in some manner. The author makes particular note of this by accounting several real world examples where a developer plateaued, and "coasted" for several years, until one day they became obsolete.
This is highly related to another concept from the Feynman method of learning, or the "purpose-driven" learning of self-critique, that is that learning and skill-building is a process that requires constant attention, action. It requires one to adapt a growth-mindset, and accept the notion of life-long learning, and supporting that life-long endeavor in all holistic manners, including maintaining your mental and physical health (and area many developers neglect).
I also liked the author's section on reverse note-taking, which unfortunately is labor-intensive, but is the only way I've found to learn technical material at any non-trivial depth. I'm happy that the author has validated this approach as one of the more optimal ones.
Overall, a good book on skill-building, with a good mix of tactical commentary on learning, and a more holistic "life lessons" commentary on skill-building. Recommend.
The most insightful thing the author hammers home in the text is the notion of "plateauing", which is when one gains enough mastery to feel relatively comfortable with a code process. Many people plateau, and than stop growing. This is a mistake, as in any technical domain, there is always potential to go deeper, and increase mastery in some manner. The author makes particular note of this by accounting several real world examples where a developer plateaued, and "coasted" for several years, until one day they became obsolete.
This is highly related to another concept from the Feynman method of learning, or the "purpose-driven" learning of self-critique, that is that learning and skill-building is a process that requires constant attention, action. It requires one to adapt a growth-mindset, and accept the notion of life-long learning, and supporting that life-long endeavor in all holistic manners, including maintaining your mental and physical health (and area many developers neglect).
I also liked the author's section on reverse note-taking, which unfortunately is labor-intensive, but is the only way I've found to learn technical material at any non-trivial depth. I'm happy that the author has validated this approach as one of the more optimal ones.
Overall, a good book on skill-building, with a good mix of tactical commentary on learning, and a more holistic "life lessons" commentary on skill-building. Recommend.
May 12, 2018
It has several tips that can help you, but after a while it can sound repetitive.
This book is more a collection of articles, which explains in part why some knowledge may overlap when answering different questions.
In all, is a good collection of advice in article format, put together in a book.
There are like 65 chapters in this book but, since it is made of small articles, it is a quick read, for when you have like 15 minutes free to read only.
This book is more a collection of articles, which explains in part why some knowledge may overlap when answering different questions.
In all, is a good collection of advice in article format, put together in a book.
There are like 65 chapters in this book but, since it is made of small articles, it is a quick read, for when you have like 15 minutes free to read only.
May 30, 2021
It has some good advice for developer. How would he get the initial confusion of what path to choose and what to do to keep itself on the track.
What to do in the moment of despair, A 10000 hour rule is empahized to achieve the mastery.
Some easy digestable topics for the developer when it first discovers freelance. The story after you start freelancing, how to navigate the developer nightmares.
Book reading and continue practice is the key to stay competent and on the verge.
What to do in the moment of despair, A 10000 hour rule is empahized to achieve the mastery.
Some easy digestable topics for the developer when it first discovers freelance. The story after you start freelancing, how to navigate the developer nightmares.
Book reading and continue practice is the key to stay competent and on the verge.
August 4, 2021
A gem would reccomend to anyone that's starting out / interested in software developement as it would provide you with great insights .
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews