If You Call Yourself a Developer You Should …

Sometimes people scare me. Mostly it’s people who start a conversation with some variant of “I’ve been a developer for X years and I’ve never experienced a conversation like this…”

It tends to come up when I kick someone’s code back and remark “Remove your own jQuery, delete the demo folders, and your domain name is a problem so change X to Y.”

They get upset because I’ve not spelled out, specifically, to the letter, what’s wrong and where. I’ve had those conversations with everyone from a mom-and-pop shop coder to Microsoft and it really only bothers me when people are running dev companies and ask things like “How do I find that?” or “Where is that code?”

So here are my rules of what a Developer should know:

Know Logic

You should understand logic. Not Spock Logic. Math Logic. And Computer Logic. Don’t worry. I don’t think you need to be a math rock star to write code. I think that if you understand basic algebra, which you may be surprised to know you do, then you’re okay. But you have to understand the most basic of logic gates:

Can you look at that and understand the differences? Great. Write some code. Understanding the elementary building blocks of circuits, the A or B, the Yes or No, is the crux of programing. If you can’t logic that out, you should stop and read up on it. Most self-taught programmers have intuited that, but at some point they had a class in Boolean Algebra and learned this. Maybe it wasn’t called that, but most of us had that class in at least High School. You’ll need it.

Know Grep

You need to know how to search all the files in your code. If you’re on a linux flavor, grep or ack are your best friends. So when someone says “I see you’re calling domain.com in your code, why?” you know how to find that, even if they don’t give you a line.

Know What You’ve Got

You need to know all the packages added to your code. Did you add a library or a sub-module? This is your responsibility to know what they are. That way, when someone tells you to ‘remove the X module’ you’re not surprised. If it’s in your code, you should know what it is.

Know What You Need

You need to know what those packages are adding to your site. Did you download a whole jQuery library with all the demo files and a version of jQuery and the help docs? Do you really need all that? Dollars to donuts, you don’t. Don’t let your code be cluttered by what you don’t need. It’s more work to maintain it, and if there’s a security hole in it, you still have to be aware of it. Save yourself time, effort, and a hack. Leave out what you don’t need.

Know What To Use

You need to know how to edit the various filetypes. Personally I don’t care what you use. I like Coda. My friends like Sublime. I don’t care. Just make sure you use something that works for you and helps you work better. While you can do all your programing in Notepad, I wouldn’t suggest it. You will need tools to help you keep track of the complex world you’re building. Sometimes you’ll have to use a specialized tool.

Know How Your Tools Work

Did you know Github makes a downloadable zip of your code? Did you know that zip doesn’t include submodules? Did you know Github forks aren’t searchable? You should. I have a few awesome tools, like Coda, which lets me search my repositories and find code. I use BBEdit to search zips. I use a new tool to compare folders when I don’t have version control (for whatever reason). But I know how they all work.

What Else?

What do you think is imperative for someone who calls themself a professional developer to know?

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

I’m Mika (aka Ipstenu) and I’m complicated. I’ve been on the net since the days of dedicated terminals and Novation CAT modems and solved Missionaries and Cannibals (or Goats and Cabbages) before I was six, and blog about WordPress and technical/computer things at Half Elf on Tech.

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