What makes great programmers

Why is that the case? Successful programmers share a number of personal traits. In fact, they can be fostered or trained by anyone who is motivated enough.

These are qualities that will help you grow your business as a freelance programmer or go up the ranks as an employee.

A lot. There are people that find this extremely frustrating. And any programmer will be able to tell you a story or two where they felt like smashing the keyboard against the screen.

If you enjoy this challenge , however, you will thrive thanks to it. People who like solving puzzles are right at home in this profession.

Programming, like almost all jobs involving computer technology, is prone to extremely rapid changes. Not only does technology evolve at a breathtaking pace, trends also come and go, sometimes in a matter of months. That means refreshing and updating your skillset to fit the market and technology as a whole at regular intervals. This is a vital skill to becoming a successful programmer in the long term. But while learning requires systematic commitment, being curious is all about that initial spark.

Plus, too many people aim for improvement without any sense of how to get there. So let me share eight actionable guidelines that can act as a flowchart to improving your programming skills. These tidbits of wisdom are gathered from 35 years in the computer industry, many of which were spent as a lowly grasshopper at the feet of some of the people who defined and documented it. That sounds obvious, but experienced programmers remember how long it took to overcome this personal assumption.

To become great—not just good—you have to learn from experience. But be careful, experience can teach us to repeat poor behavior and to create bad habits. Novice software developers and too many experienced ones look at their code to admire its wonderfulness. They write tests to prove that their code works instead of trying to make it fail.

Yes, your first step is always to write quality software that fulfills the spec. Average programmers quit at that point and move on to the next thing.

Great programmers know that the first iteration is just the first iteration. It works— congratulations! Now, make it better. Is it valuable to make it faster? Easier to document? More reusable? More reliable? Good programmers write software that works. Great ones write software that works exceedingly well. That rarely happens on the first try. The best software usually is written three times:.

This level of work may not be obvious when you look at the work of the best developers. And it prevents you from getting stuck in a rut. To get better, ask yourself:. Write out your answers, whether in a personal journal, a blog, in a code review process, or a community forum with other developers. Businesses use technology to solve business problems.

You should take advantage of opportunities to talk to the business users and ask them questions about the challenges they face in their work. If you get really interested in understanding the business, you can take courses or even work towards certifications in the business domain. Be a team player. Movies often glorify a solo coder, and students usually work on assignments on their own, but real-world projects are team efforts. You need to be able to deal with people with varying abilities and respond to differences of opinion respectfully.

If you can, get to know your teammates as people, not just technical staff. Having conversations about other things than the project helps form relationships that make working together easier.

Understand the importance of deadlines. Be adaptable. The changes may be small and temporary or major and permanent. If the changes are permanent, allow time to understand what the new situation is and how you fit into it.

It may present new opportunities to help you achieve your goals. Own your product. Stand out by following it through the rest of its lifecycle—be willing to help with testing, deployment, training users, and solving production problems.

While this helps your business, it actually helps you more, because you see and understand the real-world effectiveness of the code you wrote. Then take that understanding and let it help you make your next application even better. Looking for a Career in Web Development? Read our quick-start guide to becoming a Developer.