software engineering 👩‍💻 💯

Never be afraid to say that you don’t know something

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

We all suffer(ed) impostor syndrome

Learn to deal with pressure

When you're in a real interview the world changes: You're locked in a cage with a lion. Every heartbeat is a gorilla bashing against the walls. Your mental gears gunk up as your body goes into fight or flight mode. Your clammy hands struggle to write half legible code on the white board. A threat hides behind every shado... See more

At some point you will discover the Right Way to program, the thing which makes this all make sense , and you'll be convinced that the whole field would be so much better off if everybody else programmed the Right Way, too. For me the Right Way was test-driven development; for you it might be functional programming, lisp, formal methods or one of a

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Remembering that the tech industry is being built by people just figuring things out on the fly isn’t just a way to avoid stress; it’s become one of the most empowering bits of advice I can imagine. Because if all those people out there have changed the world while not knowing what they were doing…so can I.

Spending time sharpening the axe is almost always worth it

You’re going to be renaming things, going to type definitions, finding references, etc a lot ; you should be fast at this. You should know all the major shortcuts in your editor. You should be a confident and fast typist. You should know your OS well. You should be proficient in the shell. ... See more

If you’re lucky, you will have many challenging moments in your career. Moments when you only understand a portion of the problem in front of you, when you know you’ll have to try a few things to see what works, when you aren’t fully confident that you can do the job. We’re lucky to have these moments because that’s how we grow. By pushing outside ... See more

Julia Evans once said "behind every best practice is a horror story." If you don't understand a Best Practice, look for the horror story that inspired it. It might make the best practice make sense. It might turn out to be something that's completely irrelevant to you, and then you can feel comfortable doing a different practice instead.