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10 Best practices for developers, from top devs at Google, Pinterest, Signpost, ILM...

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Found a great article on http://venturebeat.com about 10 best practices for developers, curated from engineers at some of tech's biggest sites such as Google, Pinterest, and more.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/06/10-best-practices-from-top-coders-at-google-pinterest-more/

The article is worth reading, but here's a summary:

  1. Think carefully before you choose your first language
  • pick a language based on the community
  1. You’re no code monkey!
  • understand the motivation behind why you're being asked to build something
  1. Stay agile and don’t stop shipping
  • fail fast, always be testing, release early and often, practice TDD
  1. Stay in control of the testing process
  • TL;DR: TDD is awesome, do that.
  1. If you’re a freelancer, learn to say no, even to money
  • assume all estimates of time and money are half what they should be
  1. Don’t rest on your laurels — theory matters, but practice matters more
  • doing > reading
  • side projects are awesome, but focus on one at a time
  1. Peer review is your secret weapon
  • pair programming is awesome because feedback is essential
  1. Avoid premature optimization like the plague
  1. You write your code once, but people will read it thousands more times
  • pretend the person maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows your home address
  1. It’s a noble profession. Use your skills for good.
  • don't do evil
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