8 Tips For Becoming A Senior Developer

In this video, I share some tips to help you become a senior developer and make progress on your career path more quickly. No code in this particular video, but next week I'm back with more programming tutorials!

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👀 Code reviewers:
- Yoriz
- Ryan Laursen
- Sybren A. Stüvel
- Dale Hagglund

🔖 Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:59 Junior vs medior vs senior vs lead developers
3:36 Tip #1: Write Well-Designed Code
4:49 Tip #2: Always Maintain A Learning Mindset
5:42 Tip #3: Document What You Learn
7:06 Tip #4: Look At The Bigger Picture
8:25 Tip #5: Take Responsibility For Your Work
9:10 Tip #6: Understand The Context Of What You're Working On
9:48 Tip #7: Have Open Discussions
11:14 Tip #8: Have Side Projects
11:59 Outro

#arjancodes #softwaredesign #python

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[slhcn]

1: Write Well-Designed Code
2: Always Maintain A Learning Mindset
3: Document What You Learn
4: Look At The Bigger Picture
5: Take Responsibility For Your Work
6: Understand The Context Of What You're Working On
7: Have Open Discussions
8: Have Side Projects
*9: Follow the ArjanCodes :)*

[AzureFlash]

How to be a Senior Developer:
1. Be a developer
2. Grow old

[phibl]

11:57 Two things would come to mind spontaneously, GIT and Linux.

GIT: For the first few years, I always copied entire project folders back and forth as a backup. But I had almost no overview of what changed when and where. Learning GIT fundamentally changed my understanding of programming and how code should be structured (to make it version well with GIT).

Linux: At the end of WindowsXP I didn't switch to Windows7 but to Linux. That changed my world! It helped me a lot to understand how simple and effective software (architecture) can be.

[tylerbloom]

Back when I wrote mostly python code, I loved this channel. I've almost entirely switched to Rust, but I love to come back and see language-agnostic content! A major point (related to side projects) is to follow your passion. If you're just trying to learn stuff, don't worry about "if someone will use it." If you might use it, that's good enough!!

[deez_gainz]

Would be interesting to see your view on side projects: Examples of what you and people you know choose to do as a side projects. How to allocate and manage time so that it doesn`t stretch for months and years. And some though process of how you go from an idea to choosing a stack, architecture and planning what to do first. Thanks!

[augustsbautra]

Top quality content, Arjan. I can attest that all of the points made strengthen seniority, with "3. Document What You Learn" being a big standout because it benefits not only you, but the whole team as well.

[TNothingFree]

You're one of my favorite channels in youtube!
Definitely would recommend to others.

Excellent tips, I embraced them all long ago and that helped me to be very efficient and mindful about my work.

A tip I would add is "Learn from your mistakes and from others mistakes".
Yeah you could be mistaken even as a senior developer - don't linger, fail, learn from it and carry on.
This lead me to absolute amazing solutions.

[thejedijohn]

I've learned so much from your videos. Thanks for addressing design patterns in a way that is digestible but still gives a good thorough understanding of the concept.

Feedback you can totally ignore because the opinion of some rando on the internet doesn't really matter ::
1. You asked what helps me most with learning, and I would say practice problems. In math, at the end of each lesson there are ~50 problems to solve that help the student work through the concept at increasing levels of difficulty. I would LOVE if more of the YT software tutorials gave some kind of "problem set" suggestion at the end of the video. I realize that's asking for a lot more from you, coming up with problems is sometimes more difficult than teaching the topic, but I would love it if I had some challenge problems to work though other than just following along with the code in the lesson.

2. I was not a fan of the changing viewpoint in this particular video, which seems to be a new addition. I tend to watch most YT videos at 2x, 2.5x or 3x. When the viewpoint changes too often, or is unsteady like the side shot camera, it can be really disorienting and almost nauseating. I know there is a not-insignificant percentage of other YT users who watch videos at higher speeds also, so it might be good to sometimes watch your videos at that speed and see if the transitions, camera angles, etc are more of a problem then they seem at 1x.

I don't want to discourage creativity and new techniques for improving the video quality, but the steady camera with one zoom level and minimal transitions is easily my preferred video style.

Thanks again for great videos. And feel free to completely ignore the feedback from one guy who doesn't know anything about making videos on youtube.

[essamgouda]

Thank you so much for the video, it doesn't only help with how to become a senior dev, but helps with giving us (junior devs) reassurance that its always about learning and no matter how much you think you know, you should always stay humbled and never get discouraged because there is much more that you don't know.

[marcotroster]

I love it when I'm sitting at my code editor with some really hard conceptual thinking upfront and then there's this magical moment where all the pieces of code connect like a puzzle, just because I found exactly the right concepts and abstractions. Letting the coding sessions flow and guide me to brilliant solutions I didn't think of upfront as a whole is so much fun actually. For me, this demonstrates the power of XP, TDD and good design skills 😄

Keep it up Arjan! You taught me how to properly code in Python, great stuff. It's helping me a lot at my current project where I'm developing a self-driving car software 😄

[dave-o]

Really great stuff as always Arjan. As per #6, I think understanding the lifetime and scope of the software is important. Too many times, I've seen developers trying to design for the infinitely extensible and scalable solution that adds a lot of complexity, when in reality it is within one business domain and has a life of 2-5 years. While conversely, sometimes project teams define a Minimum Viable Product that trims necessary scope and quality with no roadmap beyond MVP. It's really important to understand the real world purpose and context of the software. Anyway, great video, thanks!

[christensencode]

I enjoy your perspective on this issue. It seems like most other YouTubers come across way too strong on stuff like this. Like, their requirement are super steep for what it takes to be a developer. Your perspective seems much more grounded.

[artus]

In my personal opinion Tip #3 changed quiet a lot in my life. I always had the problem that something popped up in my brain, but i couldnt find the snippet or the paper where it was written. Therefore I created a git repo, with Design Patterns examples and a Document where i wrote an absract about the paper i was reading. I revisit these regularly to not forget what i have studied.
BTW I love your videos. I've learned so far so much from you, which I also use at my daily work! :)

[AlpNixTech]

Thanks for this video! It didn't also give me tips for becoming a senior developer but also I learnt a lot from you in my way of becoming a content creator. Thanks again for your videos!

[adjbutler]

As always, love your stuff! Your whole channel is meeting me exactly at my level of needs right now... so thank you.

[ScrobAlex]

Sometimes Arjan's humour takes me by surprise :D. Great Video!

[cantis]

I liked the comments On Jr, Intermediate, Sr, Lead. I've recently started as a Lead and some 'soft' content for Leads would be cool. Also some attention to older devs (50's) would be interesting as this isn't very common content.

[zelytics]

Taking responsibility is definitely the major point. In my experience, trying to look behind your field of expertise has often helped improve my process as a whole. I try to observe what people in other computer science domains are doing and try to picture how that could improve my own implementations.

[maximilianka]

Great tips! I really enjoyed listening and I'm looking forward to the next one!

[Pawlsolidus]

I agree with the side projects tip. I also would like to add that my team have some meetings about refactoring and teaching some tech things to each other. That has helped us a lot with Code quality improvements.