Recently one more senior developer decided to leave my team and the company. The event got me a bit sad, not only the team is loosing a good developer but it also means new developer will be joining the team and that means teaching the developer all the ropes.
I have been through this few times now and its really starting to get to me. It takes time for a developer to learn how to write clean code, test drive, refactor, not to mention learn all the ins and outs of the company’s systems.
In addition I keep noticing that a developer can take expensive courses, lets say on TDD and still lag behind – missing tests or writing too many. That got me thinking, is it possible to improve the situation by creating yearly refresh courses? Effectively new developers get to know all the essentials of development at the company and present developers get to fresh up on the existing practices and perhaps come up with improvements (or trash something that no longer brings value).
So here are 5 topics:
- Clean code
It is important to learn and practice writing clean, easy to read and follow code. Clean code is a foundational knowledge, it effect all other practices in very fundamental way (from production to test code). - Unit testing and TDD
Testing is the prerequisite for continues delivery. Every developer must understand the value of testing and how it enables continues delivery. TDD is the best developer technique for writing valuable tests with the maximum reasonable coverage. Tests is code, it requires maintenance, tests must bring value and TDD is well established technique for doing so. - Refactoring
No one ever designs or writes perfect code. Moreover no one has crystal ball that predicts future business needs. Refactoring is important skill for continuously changing, adopting and improving code and system design. - Higher order testing
Beyond a system boundary, there are more systems. Developer must understand techniques and tools that are available for Integration, Contract and E2E Testing. Pros and cons must be weighted carefully in order to provide meaningful automated testing and short lead times. - Pipeline and environment
Software systems no longer built locally and run on bare metal. Pipeline builds systems and those systems run in virtual environments. While developers are not DevOps (and probably will never be), it is important for developers to know how pipelines are developed, employed and maintained. How systems are packaged and run in docker under Kubernetes.