Programming Achievements: How to Level Up as a Developer

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Programming Achievements: How to Level Up as a Developer

This gist is a fork of Jason Rudolph's blog post on leveling up as a developer.

Quoting Jason Rudolph:

So it took a while, but I'm becoming more comfortable with the immeasurability of my pending goal: earning the rank of "really good > developer." If such a developer earns this distinction because of his experiences, then maybe we can still have a well-defined path marching in the general direction of "really good developer" and beyond. I suspect that path looks something like this:

1. Identify the experiences that advance a person as a developer.
2. Select a particular experience to pursue.
3. Pursue that experience to completion. (Achievement unlocked!)
4. Reflect on that experience. Really soak it in.
5. Return to Step 2, this time selecting a new experience.

• Current project(s)
• completed projects

programming-achievements.md

Learn a variety of programming paradigms:

• Write a program in assembly language
• Write an application in a functional language (Elixir)
• Write an application in an object-oriented language (Ruby/Rails apps)
• Write an application in a prototype-based language (JS apps)
• Write an application in a logic programming language
• Write an application using the Actor model
• Write an application in Forth

Experience the ins and outs of programming for different platforms:

• Write a nontrivial web app
• Write a nontrivial desktop app
• Write a nontrivial mobile app
• Write an embedded app
• Write a realtime system

Enhance your understanding of the building blocks that we use as developers:

• Write a networking client (e.g., HTTP, FTP)
• Write a device driver
• Write a B-tree database
• Wrap an existing library to provide a better (more pleasant) user experience
• Write an application or framework that provides a plugin model
• Write a testing framework
• Write a programming language

Enlighten yourself with koans, katas, and the wisdom of ages:

• Complete five code katas
• Complete the programming koans for a language that you want to learn (Ruby)
• Attend a code retreat
• Read SICP and complete all the exercises

Program in the open:

• Contribute to an open source project
• Have a patch accepted
• Earn commit rights on a significant open source project
• Publish an open source project
• Perform a Refactotum of an open source project

Learn by teaching others:

• Present a lightning talk Presentation on scraping data
• Present at a local user group
• Present at a conference
• Deliver a training course
• Publish a tutorial
• Publish a constructive code review of an open source project
• Write a programming book