I have been writing code for fifteen years, but most of my growth has happened in the last five? What happened?!
Here's a list of daily habits I picked up—none of them seem very big in isolation, just like how a ship's rudder isn't the biggest part of the ship. But when you make some small adjustments to how you operate, like turning a small rudder on a ship you can drastically change the course and direction the whole ship is travelling in.
Here are some of the course corrections and habits I began to adopt a few years ago that I think have really helped propel me in the direction of growth:
- Focus on learning to use a computer, rather than using software
- Dig one layer deeper into understanding the current solutions and tools you use, try to figure out how and why they do work the way they do to solve the problems you're working with
- Create many small throwaway test cases to verify what you have learned - never be afraid to re-write code from scratch (if you are close to a good solution, what you re-type each time from scratch ought to end up looking very similar ;) )
- Learn about the specifications and documentation for the tools you work with every day, and try to understand in which situations they complicate your work. Strive to be able to tell the difference, and understand in which situations each tool is most useful.