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My Definition Of A Senior Developer

Michael Hoffmann on July 22, 2018

During my time as a software developer I met and worked with many other developers. Some of them just started their apprenticeship, some started th...
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Bruno Costenaro • Edited

In my opinion, it's much more simpler than that. A senior developer is just someone who worked a lot and is aware of most pitfalls other junior developers tend to fall, so he/she is able to get work done faster and more reliably so.

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Ryan Palo

Or she! :)

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Bruno Costenaro

yes definitely, edited the post, thanks for pointing out!

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Ryan Palo

No problem :) That's what I figured you meant.

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Sophie The Lionhart • Edited

"Fight for your opinion" this is the most important thing that I find developers lack, no matter how good or bad they are. Every place I've worked that had a bad dev culture or code base had this as the root cause. Doing things blindly because your team lead, CEO, CTO, or whoever told you to leads to bad code, and possibly building the wrong thing. If you disagree, say something, explain why, and then come to an understanding with all stakeholders. You or they may have info needed to get to the best outcome. Similarly, always ask why a feature is being implemented if its not obvious. It will help you do it better than if you don't know. You won't have to go to the card's creator if you have a question of 'should I do A or B for this?' because you will know which makes sense based on the reason for the change. Or it might help you realize they want this feature due to some issue they have with an existing feature that they don't realize can be easily changed. Like a report is missing a few fields and maybe they want an option to include a graph, so they suggest a whole new report system. But for sure, fight for your opinion, never be afraid to argue(not heatedly) to get to the best outcome. If you can't do that with your CTO, or boss, or whoever, consider looking for a better work place if you can.

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Jason C. McDonald

This.

I definitely want to be teachable and open to having my ideas challenged. However, if I think I know something, I hold it pretty firmly until someone can make a better counterargument to my own. By that test, I find I'm right about as often as I'm wrong, and knowing that really helps limit my imposter syndrome.

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Gift Egwuenu

This is really informative. Thanks for sharing I think I’ve been able to leave my comfort zone trying to do all the other steps. and Constantly trying to keep up so I’m not left behind.

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Sasha Blagojevic

Couldn’t agree more, the first three described a good developer in general

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Eric Coffman

I agree with a lot of what you write. However, when you use 'their' when you should be using 'there,' you lose a little steam. Just sayin'. You wrote: "...if their is a vivid discussion..."

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Chris Bertrand

Out of everything Michael wrote you pull up on that! That's why developers use compilers and linting! 😋

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Michael Hoffmann • Edited

Thanks for the hint. I am not a native speaker so please excuse these mistakes ;-)

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Alexey Vorobyov

Link to JavaScript: The Good Parts is broken. I know I can find via google, but anyways ...

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Michael Hoffmann

Ops, fixed it. Thanks for the hint!

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Daniel Esteban Puerta

Great article! Also, the book series of You Don't Know JS is very good resource if you want to master the roots of JavaScript github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS...