#6 The Software developer journey: Staying updated

Patrick, why do you think self-training is important?

In general, training is a right for every employee wishing to improve their knowledge and advance their career. I think it's even a necessity to keep your motivation. The world of work is constantly evolving and with technological innovation and digitalization, it is necessary to update one's skills. On the one hand to preserve its performance and competitiveness in its current profession, and on the other hand to stand out on the job market.

In the field of IT development, programming languages and frameworks are often updated. We are not immune to seeing obsolete structures from one month to the next. Learning new technologies should therefore be common for us, the developers. However, not everyone does. I think it depends on experience in the trade (with a few exceptions). Developers who have a lot of experience and years of work behind them are often less motivated to learn and just apply what they know. New developers are more motivated due to their recent entry into the job market.

What advice can you give to developers who want to train in their jobs?

1. Be flexible

Sometimes, it is possible that our IT manager asks us to develop a project in a technological language that we do not necessarily master. I advise to see this as a new challenge both personally and professionally. "I have a problem,I do research and I find solutions. "The wealth of information on the Internet will enable us to meet this challenge. However, it will take time to understand and find effective solutions with clean and well-structured code. I am referring here to the concept of Software Craftsmanship.

2. Keep informed regularly

Personally, I recommend using social networks, especially Twitter, to subscribe to pages specialized in IT development*. I even sometimes take inspiration from blogs of other developers or other IT professionals. Otherwise, the official documentation of the technologies used, which can be found on the Internet, always helps us to move forward on projects.

3. Going out of your comfort zone

In IT development and project design, you can do anything. I think it's the level of complexity that comes into play. I also advise to look beyond your own development, you have to look at the whole thing (front end, back end, design, etc.) to get a complete view of the project.

When I'm not at work, I sometimes train at home on technologies I don't know, there's no pressure and there's more time to test, make mistakes and start over.

4. Communicate with those around you

Discussing and comparing technos with colleagues and/or friends is a bit like a "philosophical discussion". Sometimes they are well-founded and can help us and sometimes convince us to change our position.

Written by Patrick Jominet & Charline Pennisi