What Does It Take to Become a Software Pro?
Being a strong software developer is about much more than knowing a programming language. Good developers also need to understand architecture, testing, version control, debugging, security, and maintainable code.
I think becoming a software pro is mainly about developing good problem-solving habits. Writing clean and understandable code, reviewing changes carefully, and testing before deployment can prevent many issues later. Code reviews are also useful for improving quality and sharing knowledge across a development team.
AI tools are adding another dimension to development. They can help with code suggestions, documentation, testing, and repetitive tasks, but developers still need to review and validate the results.
What skill do you think makes the biggest difference between an average developer and a truly experienced one?
the greatest difference is found in the way of thinking, and corss domain coverage. an experienced developer knows long before what's needed in the game for a solution to be viable, feasable and successfull. An experienced developer must be able to master more than one domain in order to be able to build a digital ecosystem. Like I put in one of my papers, the developer must have knowledge from all business departments for which is building a solution. He must have executive and ceo knowledge, financial and accounting knowledge, marketing and legal knowledge, secretary and reception and much more. Based on that knowledge he knows how to approach a workflow or automation transaction, an if or a while or a function. It's not enough to have code knowledge. That, today with AI tooling becomes complementary. Based on corss domain knowledge he is able to build a proper rbac and a complex database and dataset. So in my opinion, the difference is made by the quality of cross domain knowledge. This comes from my own experience. I could built a reliable support system that allows a business to solve customer problems putting my experience as a customer support rep in it. I could build an over the counter solution, knowing the gaps in daily operations. I could build a staff system that competes even with enterprise grade systems, because of the experience and cross domain experience I have acquired. It's not random that line in that song "the master of my CEO".