As a developer
- I read [books, documentation, blogs...]
- I write [code, documentation...]
- I communicate [with colleagues, project-teams, bosses/managers...]
- I learn [from books, w3schools, stackoverflow, youtube, tutorials, video-courses, in-office training, meetups, online-sessions...]
As a developer if someone does all of the above 4 points then that person is "at the very least" a competent developer.
When you read, write communicate and learn - you grow.
As a developer if you want to grow (I would argue if you don't want to grow, but that's a different conversation altogether), then you have to read, write communicate and learn.
There is no shortcut to growth. There is no "skimming" to growth.
You have to read. You have to write. You have to communicate. You have to learn.
It is mandatory.
If you are a good at any of the three, and skip any one - you are not a competent developer, which means you are not moving forward. You are stuck. Someone will, very soon, come and move forward, and you will stay there. Stuck. Not moving forward. Not doing at least one of - reading, writing, communicating and learning.
If you believe you are stuck, introspect (self-inspection), and see what is it that you are NOT doing, and once you start doing it, you will not be stuck. You will move forward. You will grow.
Growing, moving forward, requires effort and when you stop putting effort, you stop moving forward. You get stuck again.
There is only one person that can help you - you know pretty damn well who that person is.
There are some traits, in additon to fixing above, that are also required to be fixed to move forward.
Lazy, lack of will, lack of focuse, procrastination - YOU have to fix these. Not me, not your friends, not your family... basically abso-fucking-lutely no-one else can fix this.
If you think you can't fix these, then stop "wishing" to grow.
Dreamweaver
This was an amazing tool (probably still is).
Being from a designing background, this was one of the best editor for me.
Dreamweaver had a layout option where you could have a split screen view - one with HTML code and the other with the output.
I could make changes and see the changes live in the editor - no need to refresh the browser page - and this was awesome.
I was doing HTML/CSS/JS before PHP, and even with PHP there was no "real" programming. Mostly it was used to show name if logged in, or "Guest" if not logged in. Basically it was more like "show this if logged in, show that if not logged in" and at times "redirect from here to there if not logged in".
So having Dreamweaver really helped here because I would create the placeholder text in the HTML, and in PHP I only had to replace the placeholder text with a dynamic PHP variable.
This was all fine, until I switched jobs, got a "PHP Developer" role, and got into Kayako where I had to write "real" PHP - the classes/functions... the whole shebang...