Pair program

I don’t give a lot of advice. Generally, the path each person needs to take is different so blanket advice can be tricky. That said, if you write code or want to write more code, I’m going to suggest you do some paired programming.  If you are nervous that you don’t know enough or will look dumb, I double recommend it for you.

The simple rule I have is work with someone who isn’t an ass. Other than that, write some code with another human. It’s super fun and a great way to learn.

I’ve avoided JavaScript my whole career. It pretty much became a joke. The main thing was that JavaScript can be intimidating. Seriously, with the countless frameworks alone, it just seemed like an area better left alone.  Now, I still know essentially nothing about JavaScript, but I share that just for context on my complete cluelessness.

Last week I spent most of my non-meeting time paired programming. Partnered up with someone tremendously more skilled than I am in the space. I’m talking core node.js contributor. There’s something really comforting about learning from someone who deeply knows what they’re doing. It takes some getting over yourself, but it’s worth it.