11 Habits of Highly Effective Developers
Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats
Wes Bos
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2018
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode Wes and Scott discuss 11 habits that will make you a better developer - everything from understanding the business goals behind your projects to maintaining work-life balance, staying curious, and developing empathy.
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Show Notes
2:55 - You understand stakeholder and business goals
- What is the website (or project) ultimately trying to accomplish?
- How does the business make money?
- Don’t get caught up in your own “mama drama” about frameworks, but instead focus on how a particular framework will help achieve the end goal of the business
5:13 - You’re curious and always learning
- This industry is ever-changing and isn’t slowing down
7:36 - You have an open mind about new technology
- Don’t “poopoo” something because it’s intimidating, new, scary or different
- Like foods you’ve never tried, sometimes something unusual turns out to be game changing
9:57 - You ask for help
- #LifeHack - most people know more than you
- Be comfortable with NOT knowing
- Be comfortable with failing and with how others might perceive that
- Check your ego at the door
15:35 - You help others
- Helping others solidifies your own knowledge
- Answering questions
- Blogging
- YouTube videos
- Mentoring co-workers
- Not offering unwanted advice
19:12 - You have a “problem solver” mentality
- General curiosity - figuring out why things aren’t working
- Break things down into testable components to pinpoint an issue
- Have a clear head under pressure (e.g. interviews)
24:37 - You have fun with what you do
- Enjoying challenges
- Even if something isn’t particularly fun, you find ways to make it fun and interesting
27:54 - You understand work-life balance
- Burnout is huge in our industry
- It can be difficult when you love what you do, but it’s so important to maintain balance
34:00 - You are empathetic to your co-workers and users
- Be a team players while getting things done
- Make everyone around you better at what they do
- Be someone others want to work with by being inclusive and professional
- Don’t make inappropriate jokes, put co-workers in a tough position, etc.
37:08 - You pay attention to detail
- Think about edge cases
39:03 - You’re part of the community
- Local meetups / lunch and learn
- Twitter #100daysofcode
- Conferences
××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××
- Scott: Overcooked! 2
- Wes: Book - Rich Dad Poor Dad
Shameless Plugs
Tweet us your tasty treats!
- Scott’s Instagram
- LevelUpTutorials Instagram
- Wes’ Instagram
- Wes’ Twitter
- Wes’ Facebook
- Scott’s Twitter
- Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to Syntax, the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. |
| 0:06.0 | Strap yourself in and get ready. |
| 0:08.0 | Here is Scott Telinsky and West Boss. |
| 0:10.4 | Welcome to Syntax. My name is West Boss and with me is Scott Tolinsky. How you doing today Scott? |
| 0:17.0 | Hey, I'm doing super good. Just hanging out here. We're live streaming this episode. YouTube for the first time ever just to try it out. |
| 0:25.9 | So hello to every single person that's watching right now. This is pretty sweet. |
| 0:30.8 | And if you didn't catch this one, we might do this again in the future. Who knows? |
| 0:34.7 | A little behind the scenes look into syntax right now if you're on the YouTube. But yeah, no, I'm hanging out, man. |
| 0:41.1 | I'm doing good. I'm just, I'm ready to kick it off. I'm really excited about this episode in particular because as we're doing the notes I was just like yeah this is good stuff so I'm sorry how you doing? I'm doing really really well. I'm sitting in my office with the webcam on and everybody's asking about the boxes of stickers that I have behind here. |
| 0:58.0 | There's nine massive boxes of stickers. They are currently being processed to take out a trademark infringing |
| 1:05.6 | sticker. |
| 1:06.6 | That's all I'll say about that. |
| 1:08.8 | So let's jump into it. |
| 1:11.4 | Today we're going to do the 11 habits of highly effective developers. |
| 1:15.5 | I thought this is kind of a fun one to do because there's obviously that book which seems |
| 1:19.7 | super cheesy. I think it's like the 10 habits of highly successful people. It seems |
| 1:23.6 | cheesy but it's actually a fantastic book. I really enjoyed it and we thought we |
| 1:28.6 | would sort of put together 10 habits but we didn't have 10. We had 11 so we changed the name because we do what we want over |
| 1:34.7 | here. So we're going to go through them and kind of riff on each of them and hopefully these are |
| 1:40.0 | some tips you can pick up as to how to apply them to your own career. |
| 1:44.8 | Yeah, so we have seven or how many how many did we land on I know you just said it but |
| 1:49.8 | like 11 is it totally 11 officially 11 well yeah because we're using an ordered list here so |
... |
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