If you’re an engineer, programmer, or techie, spend 10 minutes reading and absorbing this blog post by Jonathan Danylko: 20/20: Top 20 Programming Lessons I’ve Learned in 20 Years. Print it out. Post it on your cube wall. Memorize it. In my thirteen years of playing code monkey, I have come across every single one of these lessons and I still need constant reminders of some of them.
A Couple of My Favorites
1. Set a duration of how long you think it should take to solve a problem – As someone who has an addiction to problem solving, this is often a hard one for me. As a technical lead of a development team, I often tell people that if you’re not halfway through a problem at the halfway point in your original estimate, tell someone. Talk about it, generate some ideas, get an extra set of eyeballs on the problem. Almost every time, progress is made.
12. Celebrate every success – Yes, a walk around the building when a test finally passes is considered celebrating. A fist pump is celebration when the race condition you’ve been searching days for is found.
15. Humor is necessary – This is what gets me through the hard days. When there’s no one around to make me laugh, I take a gander through old CVS commit comments for a good chuckle (Everyone has them. Check these out).