Becoming a good programmer can be challenging if you didn’t have ideas of it. In this blog, I’m going to talk about 16 characteristics that good programmers have.
Characteristics of a Good Programmer
When talking about what makes a good programmer, it can be a positive attitude, willing to learn and many more? There are many characteristics of a good programmer that had. If you have most of them, you are more likely a good programmer. If you didn’t have that, it’s a guide that can help you to become a good programmer.
- Having a few of these characteristics, you need to improve yourself more.
- Having half of it, you are average.
- Having more than half of it, you are above average.
- Having most of it, you are standing out.
- Having all of it, you must be a good programmer.
Positive Attitude
No matter you are doing anything, you want to become good at something you would need to have a positive attitude towards your goal. I never seen a person can go far and go good without good attitudes.
A good programmer care about how their software can help people and their company towards the success. However, bad programmer with bad attitudes might not. They only care about themselves, it’s hardly see people could succeed with this attitude or being called as a good programmer.
Excellent Communication Skills
If you have a good technical skills, then you probably able to get an engineer job. While working on a large organization and a large team, it’s important to have a great and effective communication that saves you and other programmers time.
Team Player
Good programmers often are a team player. They are working well with other developers towards organization goal. It’s important to work as a team, especially working in a large team. Being able to collaborate with other programmers make them even more stand out and get better.
Problem Solver
Often time programmer might face lots of unexpected issues when developing products. A good programmer that can write the real code that solve the real-world problems. I believe that you might have heard of many programmers that are to succeed with their career.
One of the most success programmer you might have heard of that developed Facebook is a good problem solver. The Facebook solve the problem of “bringing the world closer together” with internet and Facebook.
Willing To Learn New Things
Good programmers must be willing to learn new things. The technologies been used today are quickly get outdated and deprecated after few years.
As a good programmer, it must be willing to learn new best practices and new technologies coming up whenever it’s required. Without willingness to learn new things, programmers can hit bottleneck of their career anytime. In the worst case, they might get fired by the company.
Work Hard and Work Smart
Good programmers aren’t just work hard, they work smarter rather than harder. They always figure out simple ways to achieve the goals without over-engineer. Do more with less.
Passion
Passion is the energy and the key of success. If you are passion at your work. You are more likely to be success being a good programmer. Almost every single day, programmers are facing a new challenge. If you didn’t have the passion of the things you are working as a programmer. It isn’t impossible to become a great programmer without passion, but it’s hard.
Write Clean Code
Good programmers not only write code that works, they write code that are scalable, readable, maintainable and understandable. Although sometimes they might rush their work with some bad code. But if they have enough time, they will take out some time to refactor the code to make sure it’s clean enough.
Good Time Management and Tasks Priority
Good programmers are good with time management and task priority. Imagine that there are huge features that going to launch soon and there are a less of time in between of it.
In order for them to achieve the goal and minimize the risks, programmers need to have the abilities to plan and prioritize the tasks to make sure they can complete the goal and respect the deadline.
Quick Learning Speed
Even if you are willing to learn new things, but It’s very hard to become a great programmer if you not able to learn things fast. Although it isn’t impossible, but it would be good to have a quick learning speed that helps you to catch up latest technologies.
Self-Learning Ability
Great programmers are self-learner, they often self-taught themselves new skills and learning something new. They read books, watch tutorials, read documentation and whatever things that helps them to learn new things.
Extensive Knowledge and Skills
Good programmers does not limit themselve, they learn things even outside their job scope during their free time. If they are working as a front end developer, they might don’t limit themselves just only for front end development knowledge. If you asked them about some backend stuff, they are also capable to answer some of your questions.
Keyboard Shortcut
A good programmer knows and uses lots of keyboards shortcut to help them get more productivity.
Use Productivity Tools
Good programmers often use productivity tools to speed up their development process that can be automated. Using a good code editor that supports several features and setup linter for their workflow.
Debugging Skills
It’s important to have a good debugging skills. Good programmers are people who being able to handle failure, quickly figure out the errors, bugs and problematic stuffs.
Deep Understanding of Technical Skills
Good programmers have deep understanding of technical skills. I have seen many programmers that understand the surface of the technical stuffs that telling others they already knew it. Good programmers never do it, they dive into a deep understanding of technical stuffs, not just understanding of what it can do and achieve, they also learn about how it works and why.