How to be a Good Software Developer

by Thejesh GN · April 16, 2020

Yesterday I spoke to students of NPTEL. The topic was "How to be a Good Software Developer". It's more like my advice to my younger self. The talk went on quite well except for few internet glitches. It was also special we because I was part of NPTEL's engineering team at Google. I touched upon the following points. I think each one can be a talk by themselves.

Empathy for your users
Code is for your team mates
Think before you code
Be a duct tape programmer
Take notes¹
Have side projects
Learn to be curious
Learn the process and tools
Write more²
Learn to use Unicode!

Ofcourse after the talk in the Q/A session there were questions about preferred programming languages, frameworks etc. I answered them as much as possible. May be I will do an FAQ blog post.

I am still getting used to live streaming. You can see me being uncomfortable in the beginning. I was okay after two minutes.

I have recorded offline videos using OBSProject. It's an amazing tool. This is the first time I have used it for streaming. It works like a charm. You should try.

I also used my Zoom H1 ³ to record the audio offline. I have edited the same. You can listen to it in your favorite podcast player.