Software development is a craft and those who practice it are craftsmen. As with any craft, this one demands a set of skills from its practitioners:

Be Good With Your Hands

To code, you must type. To code well, you must type fast. Although this sounds weird, it’s quite important. Fred Brooks once said that software is “pure thoughtstuff” (I love that phrase by the way). The more thoughts you can work through in code, the better the end product will be. Unless your hands can keep up with your mind, you will eventually lose something.

Know Your Tools

Like all craftsmen, devs should know what tools are available to them and how to use said tools. I’m often amazed at what you can do in an IDE these days: syntax highlighting, step-through debugging, Intellisense, refactoring with one keystroke, etc. I’m also often amazed at people who insist on coding everything in <fill in name of your favorite crappy text editor here>.

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Know Common Patterns

There are many smart people in your profession. There are also many difficult problems in your profession. Ipso facto, most difficult problems have already been solved by smart people. Why not try to reuse some of this wisdom before doing it yourself? I know it’s fun and exciting to write your own hash table and you may even get a price for being the 1 millionth person to do so, but isn’t there something more productive you could do instead?

Improvise Controllably

I don’t understand or particularly enjoy jazz. However, I often hear from people who understand it that great jazz musicians have an ability to improvise within specific boundaries. They could tweak the melody while keeping its signature riff or alter the song’s structure without destroying its harmony (I wish I knew what any of this means). Anyway,  great devs can apply and evolve known patterns in creative ways.

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