5 Unconventional Habits to Become a Top 1% Programmer

So you want to become better than 99% of programmers. But you are doing the exact same things that 99% of programmers are already doing. Watching video tutorials, doing online courses, and solving Leetcode problems. Everybody is doing that. Doing what everyone else is doing is the very definition of how to become average. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you want to get ahead of others, you have to be willing to do what others are not willing to do.

Here are several such things you can do right now.

Master the Art of Debugging

Most people think that programmers code all day. In reality, programmers spend most of their time debugging code. Breaking things and fixing them is an essential skill to become a skilled programmer. Yet, beginners don’t spend any time learning the right way to debug code.

To get started with learning debugging, you can do this course: - Course: Software Debugging - Platform: Udacity

Prioritize Quality Over Quantity

When I was a beginner, I would watch the longest possible programming tutorial, learn as many programming languages as I could and build as many projects as possible. In other words, I thought quantity is all that matters. But in programming, quality matters much more than quantity. One great project on your resume can easily give you an edge over someone who has numerous basic projects on their resume.

Read More Code Than You Write

Let me ask you a question. During my last 2 years working as a Software Engineer at Google, let’s assume that I have written a total of 10,000 lines of code. How many total lines of code do you think I have read during the same period?

It would be easily 100,000 lines of code which is 10 times what I have written. Yet, new programmers spend no time reading code written by experienced programmers. Go to Github and spend 30 minutes trying to understand someone else’s code every day.

Collaborate and Contribute to Open Source

The biggest disadvantage beginners face is that often, they don't get the opportunity to collaborate with experienced programmers. As a result, they never learn what it’s like to collaborate with other engineers on the team. To solve this problem, you can start contributing to open source projects. There are various guides available online to help you get started.

Connect with Top-Tier Developers

To become a top 1% coder, you need to know what a top 1% coder looks like. But where can you even find a top 1% coder? At conferences and meetups.

To find meetups happening near you, you can use: - Website: meetup.com

But before you can do any of this, you need to know how to think like a programmer.