Encouraging new developers

Interesting:

Let me give an example — say a new coder had somehow, impossibly, in their first month of coding, created an app that would save the planet, plunging us into a permanent state of world peace and 100% clean energy. What’s the first thing that you as a senior developer would say to that person before seeing or testing their project? Let me guess — you’re thinking, “Is it responsive?”

To put this in perspective, someone who knew nothing about our world has entered it and learned ~5 completely foreign technologies (perhaps JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, NodeJS, MongoDB). They then taught themselves how to use EACH of these 5 technologies WITH the other 4, had a grand-slam idea, and typed from scratch said idea, thereby typing a novel’s worth of encoded words in 50-60 separate but intertwined files. Let’s not forget testing and debugging. This person did this FOR FREE. For fun.

Or, put another way, what if a friend had spent a month perfecting his roast veal, cooked you some, and was eager for your opinion. Do you really want your first reaction, before tasting it, to be, “I hope the wine in the veal sauce is authentic French Merlot!”

Of course, we’re hoping the junior developer will say, “YES! I learned how to build everything 100% responsively in my first month of coding. Plus, it’s all ADA compliant!!” But in the likely case that the developer doesn’t say that, we’ve made them feel about an inch tall in the amount of time it takes to change a channel. And now the conversation is over.

Seriously, is “Is it responsive?” really the first words you want to come out of your mouth, before you’ve even seen the product? Can you step back, suspend your criticism for just one second, and realize that someone has just completed a shit-ton of work?

It’s not about giving false praise — it’s about choosing a response that opens the conversation wider instead of shutting it down. What about, “How does it work?” What about, “Tell me more.” What about, “What features did you include?” Hell even, “Can I see?” would be a conversation-opening response.

I understand our community’s tendency toward the blase “Nothing you can do is good enough” response. It’s not just social awkwardness. To be a successful developer, you have to teach yourself to be relentless with your own code. No matter how great it is, the perfectionist in us always sees something more that could be done. Sometimes, we forget to turn that ruthless perfectionist off when we leave work in the evenings.