Top Dev HOWTO

Top-notch developers use a variety of techniques to earn that status. Here are some of them.

• Use UPER
• Have a Growth Mindset
• Defeat Impostor Syndrome
• Show Relentless Tenacity

UPER

• UPER is a problem-solving framework.
  • Understand
  • Plan
  • Execute (coding)
  • Reflect
• Always use it on all problems.
• The battle is won or lost during Understand and Plan!
• Top devs:
  • spend a lot of time on Understand and Plan.
  • figure out exactly why their code doesn't work before fixing it.

Growth Mindset

• Every minute you spend working on a hard problem is experience points in the bank.
• It's not getting the solution that builds skill--it's working hard on the problem.
• Every time you succeed, you learn something new. Every time you fail, you learn something new.

Impostor Syndrome

• Every single developer feels like they're looking at a blank wall when they first see a difficult problem, and they will always be exposed to difficult problems.
• They UPER their way out of it
• Every single developer struggled with these concepts the first time they encountered them.

Relentless Tenacity

• Nothing separates your skill level from that of a pro other than number of reps.
• "The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried."
• Low-end developers fail and quit. Top developers fail and fail and fail and fail and never quit.