How to improve your Technical Skills in Software Development Career?

Basics

  • First try to understand what is what? Like what is Programming Language, Scripting Languages, Database Languages etc.,
  • Try to understand the differences between Desktop, Website, Mobile Application and Enterprise Application developments.
  • Know the basics of a programming language or a tool or a software.
  • Understand the Internals of the Language, like how the code is compiling internally, the architecture, the artifacts of the language etc.,
  • Understand the basics of RDBMS and NoSQL databases as well
  • Try to implement Test Driven Development (TDD) approach of development by writing unit test cases.
  • Try to execute the code in different Operating System Platforms

Official Websites

  • Always visit the official website of the Languages or Tools or Softwares and read their Official Documentation and their blogs.
  • Try to understand what you can do with that particular Programming Language or Tool or Software.
  • Check the Applications, Websites that was done using that particular Programming Language.
  • Check the recommendations of the books and any other references mentioned in the official websites.
  • Run the Sample Applications and try to understand the behaviour of the sample programs.
  • Run the sample source codes which are available in GitHub public repos or other open source communities.
  • You can refer some of the below given websites to see the industry & technology trends,  programming languages trends, databases trends etc., as per the current industry trends
    • https://www.weforum.org/
    • https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
    • http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html

Technical Certifications

  • Prepare and write the Official Certification Courses whichever relevant to your learning. 
  • Read the official guides of those certifications like MCTS, OCP etc.,

Subscriptions

  • Subscribe to Popular Video Training Websites like Udemy, Pluralsight, LinkedIn Learning, Skillshare and many more
  • Subscribe to Online Book Reading Websites like  packtpub, oreilly, kindle unlimited etc
  • Subscribe to Top Tech Bloggers who are proficients or Subject Matter Experts on their areas.

Debugging Skills & Tools

  • Learn Debugging Skills 
  • Understand the features of the tools better and use them in your projects for better productivity
  • Understand Build Tools like Gradle, Maven etc.,

Communities & Workshops

  • You can join professional organizations and attend their workshops and seminars
  • You can participate in helping Open Source Communities
  • Participate in hackathons
  • Attend Technical Workshops or Conferences or other professional talks like TEDx

Trainings

  • Give Technical Trainings to the teams. By this way you learn what you didn’t learn as well.

Reading, Listening and Watching

  • Read Technical Magazines
  • Read Technical Journals, Whitepapers, Research Papers etc.,
  • Read Online Tutorials, Videos or Blog articles of online training companies or trainers
  • Read the Cheat Sheets
  • Document the Lessons Learned
  • Watch Subject Matter Experts YouTube Videos

Social Account

  • Create Accounts with Stack Overflow, Quora, Facebook  etc., to search and post your queries

Self Building

  • Learn Best Practices of writing code
  • Learn Coding Standards of the particular platform
  • Learn to do code reviews
  • Learn Code Versioning like Git and GitHub

Architecture

  • Understand the Algorithms
  • Try to write Algorithms on the identified problems or issues
  • Develop Problem Solving Skills and Logical Thinking
  • Understand UI Design Concepts
  • Understand the strong foundations of UML, Object Oriented Design and Object Oriented Programming Concepts.
  • Understand Software Development Life Cycle and its methodologies 
  • Understand XML and JSON
  • Understand what is HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, FTP, API, REST Services, Web Services etc.,
  • Understand the Architecture of Applications like 3 Tier, N-Tier, MVC, MVP, MVVM etc.,
  • Understand 23 Gang of Four (GoF) patterns categorised into Creational, Structural and Behavioral
  • Understand SOLID Design Principles like SRP, OCP, LSP, ISP and DIP
  • Understand Saas, PaaS, IaaS
  • Understand cloud services like AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, VMware etc.,
  • Understand Security, Performance, Usability, Typography
  • Understand Encryption and Cryptography
  • Understand Automation Concepts

Projects/Case Studies

  • Analyze and Visualize the Solution to the problem
  • Visualize one concept and try to build that application or website. 
  • Try to implement real life projects on your own.
  • You can develop your own Blog.
  • Try to Build Reusable Components

Learn more about Technical concepts in our upcoming Blog articles.

Happy Learning!