What a difference a year makes in software development? Get in shape for 2020! 🥳
Tags: motivation, career, beginners
Published: 2019-12-29 10:29:25

---
title: What a difference a year makes in software development? Get in shape for 2020! 🥳
published: true
cover_image: https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/csji5ncuht9p9rahsgk5.jpg
description: how to become a better developer
tags: motivation, career, beginners
---

While tech moves so fast you just need to be disciplined, a continuous learner and to be self-educated. It's really ok to look for something else, to have different hobbies, to do the things in your way. Just weigh the pros and cons when you have to.

Here is my list of things I did better this year:

**1. Chase a career, not a job** - Yes, I’m working on shifts, I do it on the job, I go home and I do it again. I go to conferences, I do networking, I learn new things. All of this is to improve me at my job and myself as a person.

**2. Personal projects** - Yes, I do learn a lot through side projects. Also, I do chill out on the couch. Both of them are working just fine. Taking the opportunity and investing my time in certain technologies that I cannot use them at work helped me to learn more about Google Actions, building various projects on a Raspberry Pi or trying Augmented Reality applications.

**3. Coding is the fun part** - Yes, I do LOVE coding. Also, coding isn’t easy. I sit alone for hours and trying to mentally inhabit pieces of software. And there is nothing nice about figuring out why an error message appears.

**4. People are unpredictable** - Yes, while I’m coding I feel it as a refugee from the unpredictability of humans. This means that I recharge my batteries with being by myself, alone or with my family. This is not good or bad, in the end, coders are humans too.

**5. The illusion of easy money** - No, actually I have to work really hard and being efficient. Unfortunately, there is no one to just give me a salary like that. There are lots of people saying that working in the technological field it’s easy but actually, it’s hard work. 

**6. I am better then I think I am** - Yes, my intrinsic motivation is huge. I’m hungry, I’m curious, I’m chasing experiences, learning programming languages, frameworks, and new technologies day by day. 

**7. I’m not as good as I think I am** - hilarious, reading point 6. Yes, I do need to focus more on unit testing my code, or TDD or better architecture. It’s my job to make sure that I deliver a better product day by day and to tell my manager about the importance of these.

**8. Trust people** - the fear of trust is big but eventually, I realized that I’m not alone. My path of thought was on the wrong track the whole time, and the switch to get off was right there, trusting the people around me. I’m not gonna lie, going to talk at conferences made me a nervous wreck but I’m happy that I got the courage to do it. 

**9. Learning and development opportunities** - Yes, I do invest time and money in order to become better. The company I work for has a budget for this also. Attending various conferences, books, and Udemy subscription. If you are willing to grow, the company should support you and if you are not getting along with the culture of the company, find another.

**10. People don’t leave organizations. They leave managers** - Myth or truth? Yes, I do trust my manager. I find him supportive and I learned in the right environment that it’s ok to ask for help. Being able to figure out that I’m not able to perform a certain task in a specific time interval by myself and choosing between burning-out or ask for help this means to grow.

**11. Teach others what you know** - Yes, I try to do this every time. I do Android classes for students, I attend local meetups or conferences where I share my knowledge about Android and Kotlin. The best feeling to hear someone says that they learned a certain topic from you.

**12. My smile, still, stays on** - my friends working at the same company are leaving the company. Yes, it is very sad and I feel that I cannot handle it but I promise myself that I will take the time to gear up the best response.

**13. Don’t hide your mistakes** - Yes, I do mistakes. But I’m able to figure out what went wrong and why. And more importantly how to fix it. This happens in a healthy environment. 

**14. Process, Process, Process** - Yes, I do fight with Jira, meetings, tickets and so on. In a positive way, I’m not a strong opinioned person about it since I’m aware that those are improving the collaboration and work within the team.

**15. Stay committed** - Out there, so many tools, architecture patterns and a huge amount of information. Yes, I don’t know everything but I make sure though I know at least one thing really well and trying different paradigms to have at least a clue, knowing that this stuff exists.

**16. Stay motivated** - Yes, I’m not all the time motivated. There are times I have to work on a project that doesn’t spark a lot of joy. What I do is to search for challenges that I can conquer so my ego thrives from the dark. In this way boredom cannot kill my joy and productivity.

**17. Write** - Yes, I try to be a better communicator, to express my thoughts easier. This helps me to communicate technical requirements and specifications to others in an easier way. Being able to write code that can be understood by both a computer and by human beings is a skill developed over time.

**18. Ability to influence and persuade** - Coding, point 3, would be pointless without this ability. Yes, I do influence people. I structure my arguments to make a point through the idea I want to share. As developers, we work with other teams and maybe our goals are not completely aligned so choosing between the authority or the capability to influence it’s a growing. 

*Thank you for reading this. Really thrilled to start my next adventures and to meet tons of incredible people next year. What an incredible 2019!
🎉Happy New Year🎉*