Letters to a New Developer: What I Wish I Had Known When Starting My Development Career

Learn what you need to succeed as a developer beyond the code. The lessons in this book will supercharge your career by sharing lessons and mistakes from real developers.

Wouldn't it be nice to learn from others' career mistakes? "Soft" skills are crucial to success, but are haphazardly picked up on the job or, worse, never learned. Understanding these competencies and how to improve them will make you a more effective team member and a more attractive hire.

This book will teach you the key skills you need, including how to ask questions, how and when to use common tools, and how to interact with other team members. Each will be presented in context and from multiple perspectives so you'll be able to integrate them and apply them to your own career quickly.

What You'll Learn

• Know when the best code is no code
• Understand what to do in the first month of your job
• See the surprising number of developers who can't program
• Avoid the pitfalls of working alone

Who This Book Is For

Anyone who is curious about software development as a career choice. You have zero to five years of software development experience and want to learn non-technical skills that can help your career. It is also suitable for teachers and mentors who want to provide guidance to their students and/or mentees.

Dan Moore is a longtime developer who has been an employee, contractor, community member, engineering manager, and CTO. He's currently a community engineer for Transposit, a Silicon Valley startup working to help software teams run systems. He's made many mistakes throughout the years and has been blogging about them for over 15 years on his personal blog. In 2018, Dan started a blog exclusively focused on helping new developers "level up" and has published over 100 posts on ways for new developers to level up quickly. He resides in Boulder, CO. You can find him on Twitter @mooreds.