Soft Skills

Listening is one of the most important soft skills a developer should work on. Why? What is active listening? How to do it? In what situation?

Cognitive biases can bring mistakes, bugs, and wrong implementations. Knowing what cognitive biases are, what are the most common ones in software development, and how to fight them, can help you takes more logical decisions and create effective solutions.

We love, in the software industry, to give to each others titles. Junior developer, senior software engineering, front end programmer, and so on and so forth. Is these titles meaningful? What information do they carry about the people holding them? Can we think about a whole new set of titles, translating more accurately what really want companies from their developers?

We have tendency to forget that being a software developer means dealing all day long with humans. Interacting with others, communicating, explaining ideas, adapting to your team members are very, very important skills. As a developer, you will have to defend your ideas to your colleague: let's see together how to do so, with respect.

This article begin by a story. A story where everybody wanted to do their best. A story where simple, innocent words are the main protagonists. A story which doesn't end well. This is the story of declaring everything as 'easy' or 'simple' without any clue whatsoever.

Here you are! In front of a powerful CTO of the best we-will-disturb-the-market startup in town. You answered a job offer promising money and glory, soon they will be all yours! But first, you need to decipher if this company will bring you to the asylum before the wealth flows from your pockets. How to assess that you might be able to tolerate spending 8 hours a day in there?

This list range from the obvious to the underestimated skills and mindsets you should have if you want to be a better web developer. Spoiler ahead: it's not only being good technically. Interest and motivation will drive you faster than any knowledge in the last ephemeral trend.