Ask HN: How do I test that I'm improving as a software developer?
📰 Hacker News · tathagatadg
Improve as a software developer by testing your skills through open source contributions, coding competitions, and interviews
Action Steps
- Contribute to open source projects to practice coding and collaboration
- Participate in coding competitions to test algorithmic skills
- Attend interviews without extensive prep to gauge problem-solving abilities
- Prepare thoroughly for select interviews to assess system design knowledge
- Read classic computer science books to deepen understanding of fundamental concepts
Who Needs to Know This
Software developers and engineering teams can benefit from regularly evaluating their skills to identify areas for improvement and optimize their development process
Key Insight
💡 Regularly evaluating your skills as a software developer helps identify areas for improvement and optimizes your development process
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🚀 Improve your coding skills by contributing to open source, competing in coding challenges, and acing interviews! 💻
Key Takeaways
Improve as a software developer by testing your skills through open source contributions, coding competitions, and interviews
Full Article
(a) contributing to open source projects. long term disciplined approach, takes time to get evaluation (b) ship a real product. too many environmental parameters, takes time to get evaluated (c) participate in coding competitions. These tend to test your algorithm chops, and less of system design. But accurate results. (d) be generous about recruiter requests. show up for interviews without doing much interview prep (like practicing problems cracking coding interviews). but quick and fast evaluation. This gets very hard when you don't work remotely. (e) exact opposite to (d). be picky about interviews, prepare a lot for an interview. (f) attend conferences, hackathons. time consuming and may be costly and not sure how effective it is. (g) read some classic cs books cover to cover. no accurate measure What do you do regularly to evaluate if you are getting better?
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