Question

Some development skills, like refactoring operations, feel like they have an almost unlimited pontential for learning – only the fool will say he’s finished learning that.

Other skills are bound to specific tools, and being good developers we learn new tools most of the time.

But some skills are related to how you think about code and how you approach coding, sometimes how a specific tool feature can be applied. Rotating pair programming and working closely with other people seem to be the best way of acquiring these skills, though certainly not the only method. (And sometimes you learn things you SHOULD have learned 5 years ago, these are not the ones I am asking about)

So I want to pair program with all of StackOverflow:

What are your late-acquired coding skills ?

Edit: I suppose I’m not thinking about the things you would have learned as a part of the curriculum if you were coming right out of school today.

Answer 1

It’s the soft skills around being a better developer in a team than the nuts and bolts of actually being able to make an application that (more or less) meets the spec and compiles and makes the user/tester not shout too much.

1. when to defensively write extensible code because you know that it will save you time in the end.
   • when to explicitly not do point (1).
   • how to work in a team
   • how to read and react to a specification that isn’t wonderfully exact or clearly written
   • when (and how) to let someone else have the funky project because you are too busy with drudge

Mainly it’s about being a better pack animal, there are times and places to be an alpha-male, but too often programmers can’t take criticism and we can’t always be playing with the projects like they’re our toys.

If you can’t do that, then Guy Kawasaki and Joel Spolsky have written a lot of good stuff on founding your own company.