1. Confidence Through Competence and Practice
Confidence in software development stems from competence, requiring mastery of numerous skills that compound over thousands of hours of practice and learning.
Hear it at 0:00 →Engineering video
0:54 · 4 March 2023
Confidence in software development stems from competence, requiring mastery of numerous skills that compound over thousands of hours of practice and learning.
Hear it at 0:00 →Developers come to me and ask me, how can I become more confident? Well, confidence comes from competence. It comes from knowing what you're doing and doing it really well. The challenge in software development is that it's not enough to master one skill. It's not enough to be great at JavaScript. You have to know testing, version control, design patterns and a few dozen other skills. Finally, those skills compound into a top software engineer that can deliver working software on time and on budget.
This might sound discouraging. But remember, everybody starts out at everything as a total beginner. The senior developers you see at work were once juniors. Nobody is born an expert developer. It is a skill. It is learned. It takes practice, dozens and thousands of hours invested in getting better at your craft. And the more you can practice and learn from others, so you don't make the same mistakes, the faster you'll go.
You want to become more confident as a developer? Practice more and practice better.