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The road to senior dev

Alfonso Paredes Cervantes on March 06, 2018

(First of two parts) Over my growth as a developer that landed me to fund a software company, I’ve worked and mentor young engineers. A recurrent ...
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edoxtator profile image
Doc • Edited

These are some good ideas.

I also offer:

From a command line of a Python enabled box, type

python -c "import this"

And you get:

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than right now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

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angelofdeathv1 profile image
Angel

Although I agree with your post, the harsh reality is that senior level is often granted to older people just for the sake of being older (or looking more responsible. mature, etc). More years don't automatically traduce into useful experience.

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Brandon Wittwer

Every persons experience is different. I've not seen the same pattern where I've worked. Age, of course, does not garner anything but wrinkles. In my opinion, the environment you describe has a culture issue, and you should not wait to grow old there to advance.

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Matt Van Horn

I've heard this put very succinctly as: "There's a big difference between 10 years of experience, and one year of experience repeated 10 times."

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edoxtator profile image
Doc

Wow, that's bitter. Best move on before it eats you up inside. I speak from that much-maligned experience.

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angelofdeathv1 profile image
Angel

Yes, that is the red flag for me.

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icedfish22 profile image
SElly

Hi. I'm a young engineer in Japan and very impressed by this article.
Could I translate this article into Japanese and share it on qiita.com?(an engineers' community for Japanese)
Ofcourse, I will indicate this article as the source.

:)

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Alfonso Paredes Cervantes

I've just published the second part

dev.to/veloceronte/the-road-to-sen...

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Alfonso Paredes Cervantes

Of course!, I feel honored

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Nate

Great points here! My only thing to add would be to "work yourself out of a job"! People who write "job security" code will never become seniors because they can't pass on knowledge to make more seniors... Seniors help replicate themselves as best they can.

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Alfonso Paredes Cervantes

Knowledge has a curious property, the more you share, the more you have

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Marmik Desai

Writing a beautiful code is art

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Alfonso Paredes Cervantes

indeed!

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Gregory Sequeira

Part 2 of the series.

dev.to/veloceronte/the-road-to-sen...

Well written series. Kudos from India. :)

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Alfonso Paredes Cervantes

Thanks mate!

Saludos from Tijuana, México!

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Ayebare

Exactly what my PM has always told me. Not so much about writing good code but adding value to it with consultative counsel and dependability. Bookmarking this as a constant reminder. Thanks Alfonso.