Building Better Developers
Our career path will inevitably require us to try to win projects or land a job. There are simply no ways to avoid that. That means that almost every time you apply for a project or position, there will be others to compete against. Here are three ways to put your best foot forward and separate your proposal from the others. While these do not guarantee wins, they will help you stand out and get you in the door (literally... Read more
Writer’s block is a nasty situation when you are trying to crank out regular content. This may be for a blog, a podcast, or a brown bag lunch session. In all of these cases, we want to get straight to the work of creating the content. When we lack a topic or direction, that is not an option. This situation can lead to a lot of lost time while we try to find a subject. However, there are some areas... Read more
It is time for honesty. There is a dirty little secret we need to discuss. It might be surprising even. However, we need to talk about the bugs in our code. We all would like to think about writing error-free code. Unfortunately, we also all know that we code bugs more than we want to admit. Therefore, we spend a substantial amount of our time debugging errors ranging from typos to logical flaws. That leads to the topic of this... Read more
We all will have a time where we need to evaluate and select a software solution. This moment can seem daunting when we need to be confident in making the best decision. We do not want to choose poorly for our personal use and can experience a career impact when we do so professionally. Thus, we need a process that we can lean on to help us be thorough and focused on the things that matter. In this presentation on... Read more
Steady progress is an essential step in becoming a better developer. One tool for achieving this is to create a good set of tasks to complete. A daily list is an excellent starting point for building this habit. However, not all approaches are the same. Keep these three items in mind so you can create a better to-do list each day. Simple/Actionable The central idea of a to-do list is to provide a simple plan for getting things done. Thus,... Read more
Relational databases are an essential piece of many modern solutions. Thus, most developers have some exposure to SQL within the first few years of their careers. Nevertheless, there are a few skills that separate database developers from others. These three areas make a significant difference between those that want to stick out from their peers. Understand Joins (Inner, Outer, etc.) Relational databases are all about the relationships among data. That means you are limited in how you can utilize these... Read more