Everyday Activities to Become a Better Developer

March 4, 2021

I know you learn to code every day and you read a random blog post on the internet. But sometimes it becomes boring right?

Below are some activities help you to become a better developer. You can do these activities in your daily routine (but don’t try to do all of them at the same time).

1. Coding challenge

Doing coding or algorithm challenge like a playing game. No matter what’s your level, it always improves your logic.

Try to solve at least 1 problem every day. If you do it with your coding partner or colleagues then it’s good for you because you get different logic or method to solve problems.

You can do coding challenge in various websites like hackerrank, codechef, etc.

2. Start your own project

As a programmer, we can build whatever the f*ck we want right. Then just your own project now.

A Good project idea leads you to become an entrepreneur.

If this is your first time starting a project then it may take time to make a successful product.

Project always teaches you to solve real world problem. If you work everyday in the project then you can face many problem everyday and its like a coding challenge.

I personally prefer project building to improve my coding skills.

Every time I am working on my project. I’m always excited about it. And always forget about time.

It teaches you to discipline yourself and discover how you want to work.

Just start your own project now.

3. Participate in Open Source Projects

We all love open source projects right. So just take time and find some relevant open source project for you and contribute to it. Help them to find issues, solve issues, build new features and etc.

There are many benefits to do this. Like you have to understand whole project by your self, you can communicate with other programmers, by doing this regularly you can build grip to understand others codes. And many benefits too.

So, find project on GitHub according to your skills and start contribution.

4. Create package

This is another way to do open source.

The package helps other programmers to do code fast. So, build packages in JavaScript, Python, Flutter, etc. and it is nice if your package used by other developers.

It’s satisfying to see the amount of downloads of my package going up (only a few hundred so far but still!).

This is the most time consuming for me. How difficult it is for you to share your knowledge, until you have to do it.

It takes 100 times as much time to write something in an interesting way and to make sure that you are not sharing the wrong information. I want to be assured that this will please the readers and they will learn something.

I spend a lot of time making sure it will go smoothly for readers. In doing so, I almost always find there is one step that’s not clear enough.

For example, there might be ten lines in my project copy-pasted from StackOverflow and I’m not 100% assured of what it does (there’s no shame in that).

Before I publish my project, I’ll understand it. If necessary, I’ll spend an hour or more on a line of code — until I’m confident I could explain it if someone was asking.

That’s a lot of work but I’m really happy when I publish something. I get even more happy and excited when someone write positive comment on post. The feeling you get when your piece has been useful to someone is better than a cup of coffee.

Not always you get better response right. You have to do this frequently so you can get idea how this all stuff works.

Take your time, make sure you cover the topic in the title and make your piece interesting by giving sources, examples, and your own opinion.

6. Stream Yourself Doing One of the Previous Activities

Being able to explain what we’re doing while coding is a great skill.

As developers, we’ve all been through technical interviews where we were asked to solve a problem on a whiteboard or an exercise of some kind.

Being smart is cool but it’s even better if you know how to talk about what you’re doing! The ability to clearly describe how you are solving a problem can put your resume at the top of the pile. While it might be easy for some people, others have to train that skill.

Streaming yourself on a platform like Twitch allows you to practice your oral skills. The exercise is to be able to talk about what you are doing. What problem you are solving while coding.

As a content creator, you want to be interesting for your viewers.

I like to stream myself when I work on a product. For two reasons,

I can get feedback on the product I am building and get my potential first users. They can also share ideas for features I didn’t think about.
I don’t want to be scrolling Twitter while streaming, which means I’m super productive. Before turning on the stream, I write down what I want to achieve during that time and I usually get it done 50% faster.

Do not look at the number of viewers while streaming — no one cares. There might be no one, there might be 235 viewers, it’s not important. Tell yourself there are 10,000 people watching you and you have to make what you are doing interesting for them.

Conclusion

So these are some activities that help you to become a better programmer. Try all things but don’t try more than 3-5 multiple things because it becomes a headache for you.

More tips,