<story><title>On becoming a better developer (2015)</title><url>https://gist.github.com/prakhar1989/1b0a2c9849b2e1e912fb</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>edanm</author><text>You have to decide what exactly it means to be a better developer, and what exactly &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt; specifically want to achieve.&lt;p&gt;I personally made the choice, a few years ago, to focus a lot less on being a &amp;quot;great developer&amp;quot; in terms of writing the best code, and focus almost solely on &amp;quot;what can I actually achieve with code I write&amp;quot;. That&amp;#x27;s why I refocused on learning new &lt;i&gt;domains&lt;/i&gt; rather than deepen my knowledge about programming, e.g. learning ML and Data Science, instead of learning new languages or getting better at software design principles.&lt;p&gt;The end result is that, while I might never achieve &lt;i&gt;mastery&lt;/i&gt; of software architecture or of Python or other more software development oriented things, I can effectively do new things that I had no idea how to do before.&lt;p&gt;Another example - let&amp;#x27;s say you know just Python. In choosing between learning Haskell or learning 3d programming, learning Haskell will definitely deepen your knowledge of programming, of languages, of functional programming. But, end result, you won&amp;#x27;t be able to make something qualitatively different that you couldn&amp;#x27;t make using Python. Learning 3d &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; allow you to make new things.&lt;p&gt;Note: I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; saying one thing is better than the other. Different people care about different things. I&amp;#x27;ll also point out that I&amp;#x27;ve been a developer for 20 years, so I hopefully achieved a pretty high level of knowledge in many purely software development ideas before branching off to learn whole new domains. :)</text></comment>
<story><title>On becoming a better developer (2015)</title><url>https://gist.github.com/prakhar1989/1b0a2c9849b2e1e912fb</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>twblalock</author><text>In my career, the biggest factor in my growth as a developer has been working with better developers. To work closely with someone who is really good at what they do is the best education you can get.</text></comment>