5 Habits Of Best Software Developers

I come from the background of non-glamorous corporate development where we developed rock-solid code with very few defects, if any. And yes we had to sit through endless design meetings, reviews and more meetings. Over the years I realized top-notch developers in this field share very similar traits. I am talking about developers who alone can pull through your development efforts, developers who are so indispensible that you cannot imagine a day without them, who you would retain at almost any cost (if you are intelligent) and who features in almost every board meetings.

Passion
I have seen in these developers an intense passion to develop high quality products, an intense pride in what they develop. I know of someone who used to go behind management to get in features that he thought was essential for customers, even at the expense of being late for his scheduled deliveries. He resigned as an Engineering Director to work as a software developer because that’s where be believed he could make his best contribution. The intense passion also translated to achieving perfection in development (more on it later). However it mostly doesn’t translate to perfection in personal life, in fact the opposite may often be true.

Curiosity to learn
The best developers are also very good learners. You will find them engrossed in professional magazine or browse websites in an effort to know and learn everyday about new tools and technologies. He is aware but he will not always buy into latest fads. If you see someone talking about Web2.0 as the next mirage, take notice.

An eye for failures
He tends to have an inner eye for failures. He can almost always tell you upfront about the risks associated with an idea. He knows where to look for to immediately access viability of an idea. When a defect baffles everyone you will find him uncannily point out the right module or even the code where it occurred.

Anal retentive about coding standards & beautiful coding
He is a martinet for coding standards. He will go through great lengths to create elegant code and almost (who am I kidding?) anal retentive in maintaining coding standards. He will insist others do the same. He will often spend hours trying to make their code more elegant and better performing. And he never patches a defect without understanding the real cause.

Capability to drilldown and drillup in design and code
He can rapidly ascent to provide you with a 10, 000 feet view of the design and equally fast drilldown to microscopic details of the code. He knows exactly what is going on where. You will find him asking the questions in design meetings which makes a developer nervous, because most likely he didn’t even think about that possibility.

Here is another good article on this topic. However I disagree with him in few places which is what prompted me to write this article in the first place. Looking forward to your experience and feedback.