Skills of a Software Developer

Skills to grow from a solo coder into a productive member of a software development team, with seasoned advice on everything from refactoring to acing an interview.

In Skills of a Successful Software Engineer you will learn:

The skills you need to succeed on a software development team
Best practices for writing maintainable code
Testing and commenting code for others to read and use
Refactoring code you didn’t write
What to expect from a technical interview process
How to be a tech leader
Getting around gatekeeping in the tech community

Skills of a Successful Software Engineer is a best practices guide for succeeding on a software development team. The book reveals how to optimize both your code and your career, from achieving a good work-life balance to writing the kind of bug-free code delivered by pros. You’ll master essential skills that you might not have learned as a solo coder, including meaningful code commenting, unit testing, and using refactoring to speed up feature delivery. Timeless advice on acing interviews and setting yourself up for leadership will help you throughout your career. Crack open this one-of-a-kind guide, and you’ll soon be working in the professional manner that software managers expect.

Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.

About the technology
Success as a software engineer requires technical knowledge, flexibility, and a lot of persistence. Knowing how to work effectively with other developers can be the difference between a fulfilling career and getting stuck in a life-sucking rut. This brilliant book guides you through the essential skills you need to survive and thrive on a software engineering team.

About the book
Skills of a Successful Software Engineer presents techniques for working on software projects collaboratively. In it, you’ll build technical skills, such as writing simple code, effective testing, and refactoring, that are essential to creating software on a team. You’ll also explore soft skills like how to keep your knowledge up to date, interacting with your team leader, and even how to get a job you’ll love.

What's inside

Best practices for writing and documenting maintainable code
Testing and refactoring code you didn’t write
What to expect in a technical interview
How to thrive on a development team

About the reader
For working and aspiring software engineers.

About the author
Fernando Doglio has twenty years of experience in the software industry, where he has worked on everything from web development to big data.

Table of Contents
1 Becoming a successful software engineer
2 Writing code everyone can read
3 Unit testing: delivering code that works
4 Refactoring existing code (or Refactoring doesn’t mean rewriting code)
5 Tackling the personal side of coding
6 Interviewing for your place on the team
7 Working as part of a team
8 Understanding team leadership