John Crickett on LinkedIn: Writing is the most important skill you need to develop as a software… | 82 comments (2024)

The best way to level up your coding skills is to build fully functioning applications.That’s why I post weekly Coding Challenges that helps software developers level up by practicing building real-world applications.Today's challenge is to build your own text editor.If you fancy a challenge, give it a go! If not you might like to try one of the previous challenges:⇢ Build your own Redis server.⇢ Build your own QR Code Generator⇢ Build your own Lisp interpreter⇢ Build your own application load balancer.⇢ Build your own API Rate Limiter.⇢ Build your own Git Client.⇢ Build your own DNS Resolver.⇢ Build your own Spotify client.⇢ Build your own IRC client.⇢ Build your own shell.⇢ Build your own diff.⇢ Build your own URL Shortener.⇢ Build your own basic web server.⇢ Build your own Discord Bot.⇢ Build your own compression tool using Huffman encoding.⇢ Build your own grep.⇢ Build your own traceroute.⇢ Build your own Unix command line tool: wc.⇢ Build your own JSON parser.⇢ Build your own Unix command line tool: cut.⇢ Build your own stack based calculator.⇢ Build your own Unix command line tool: sort.⇢ Build your own Unix command line tool: uniq.If you'd like to keep up-to-date with future challenges you can subscribe via the links in the article or on my profile.

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If you're a new software engineering manager...Or you think you might become an engineering manager soon...What's your biggest fear?What worries you most about the role?

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The best way to learn to build software, is to build real software.But often it’s hard to know what to build, so we end up spending time looking for ideas instead of building and learning.To help with that, I’ve been sharing a list of project ideas complete with steps to work through in my Coding Challenges newsletter.Today I'm publishing the latest issue, it is the fourth in a new series that looks at the common mistake people make when solving the Coding Challenges and helps you avoid them. Making you a better software engineer.

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The best way to learn to build software, is to build real software.But often it’s hard to know what to build, so we end up spending time looking for ideas instead of building and learning.To help with that, I’ve been sharing a list of project ideas complete with steps to work through in my Coding Challenges newsletter.Tomorrow I'll be publishing the next issue, which looks back at the 4th coding challenge, building your own cut.And shares the lessons to be learned from the publicly shared solutions to it.

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In software engineering, “it depends” often sounds like a smart answer.But if it’s the only answer you get, it’s an utterly useless answer.It suggests that the engineer is experienced enough to know that context matters, but not experienced enough to be able to articulate why, how or dig into your context.Next time you are tempted to say “it depends”, complete the sentence. Either explain what it depends on and why, or ask the questions you need to, to be able to give a more precise answer.

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82% of manager are accidental managers. That is managers thrown into the role with no formal training and often no desire to be managers.With that in mind it's no surprise that only 27% of employeesconsider their manager to be effective.I started digging into this and it prompted me to do two things:1. Posted a survey on leadership training (here: if you'd like to share your experience: https://lnkd.in/eka8Zhft)2. Write about it in today' Developing Skills - https://lnkd.in/e58qpeeyWhat really stands out so far is 100% of the managers taking the survey would like more leadership training.If you're a software engineering leader, where do you stand?

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There aren’t enough software engineering managers in most companies.And this problem is getting worse.The biggest, hardest and most common problems we have in software development are not technical, they're people problems.

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82% of managers have had no formal training!These managers are known as ‘accidental managers’.These accidental managers, with no formal leadership training contributing to almost a third of an organisation’s employee attrition.It’s not great for the managers either, many of them are not at all confident about their leadership abilities and most of them feel the need for more training and development.If you’re a software engineering manager, does this reflect your experience?I’d love to know more, either in the comments below or in this short survey: https://lnkd.in/gshucqvm

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The best way to learn to build software, is to build real software.But often it’s hard to know what to build, so we end up spending time looking for ideas instead of building and learning.There are two solutions to this problem. Firstly, contribute to an open source project - do a Google search for ‘Good First Issue’ visit one of the top results and look for a project that interests you.However many people give up on open source option because it’s not easy to find that right combination of:1. an active project,2. that interests you,3. is in the programming language you want to use, and4. has an open issue that you can tackle.If that's the case, then the second way is to build a clone of an existing application or system. Either something you already use, or you can do one of my Coding Challenges:⇢ Build your own Redis server - https://lnkd.in/eHRCAmCE⇢ Build your own URL shortener - https://lnkd.in/ezCc8EFR⇢ Build your own Application Load Balancer - https://lnkd.in/eiBRVHNu⇢ Build your own DNS Resolver - https://lnkd.in/eUB3nyxC⇢ Build your own Git Client - https://lnkd.in/eG6jYyRm⇢ Build your own Scheduling App - https://lnkd.in/eKDSRhdS⇢ Build your own Rate Limiter - https://lnkd.in/e2C2RB4M⇢ Build your own Message Broker - https://lnkd.in/eaFGTxKT⇢ Build your own Web Server - https://lnkd.in/ezBDppnb⇢ Build your own Memcached server - https://lnkd.in/esGquJTy⇢ Build your own IRC client - https://lnkd.in/eqWfX_JR⇢ Build your own Discord Bot - https://lnkd.in/emAymj8b⇢ Build your own compression tool using Huffman encoding - https://lnkd.in/e4WcUyYy⇢ Build your own Spotify client - https://lnkd.in/eGDB9zgN⇢ Build a JSON parser - https://lnkd.in/ejWVe4H6People are solving the challenges in Rust, Clojure, Python, C, C#, C++, Java, Go and Dart.If you fancy giving them a go, you can click on any of the links above or to get future challenges sent directly to you, you can subscribe to the Coding Challenges newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/e4S487pP

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Resume-driven development pays better.But it’s holding the industry back.And it’s too late to fix it.We’ve unintentionally created a system were developers are rewarded for learning new technology instead of creating value for the organisation. Let me explain.In a 2021 study they found that: 60% of hiring managers said that trends influence their job adverts, while 82% of software engineers believed that using trending technologies makes them more attractive for prospective employers.So hiring managers, feel the need to advertise and look for new technology to attract candidates. Candidates then feel the need to get those technologies on their resume to get past screening.It then becomes a vicious circle. Individually we only win by playing the game and we can only solve the problem by working together as an industry.All of which makes it ever harder for new developers to break into the industry.

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