There are a lot of different types of developers in the field. Some will be your basic 9-5 workers who are the backbone of most development shops. They are there to get a job done and when their day is over they go home to their own lives. On the other extreme are the ones to live, breath, eat, and sleep coding. When they aren’t working on at their day job they are building side projects, attending or giving lectures, or hosting development podcasts. Both extremes, and everyone in between them can be good software engineers. You don’t have to dedicate your life to coding to be a good engineer, but it will take some effort on your part to learn and grow. When thinking of what makes a good software engineer a lot of people think about algorithms, data structures, etc. These make for a good computer scientist, which is an academic label. Software engineer is a job role that uses knowledge of these things but is not defined by them. The goal is to produce value to a company by helping them to earn money and grow. So what does make a good software engineer or developer? {using the terms interchangeably here, yes they can have diff meanings.} A good developer is not only able to write code that solves problems, but has knowledge and ability in other areas of software engineering from the architecture to build process to delivery. This list of 10{+} rules are a great starting point on your journey to becoming a good or great software developer. You don’t have to dedicate your entire life to the art of writing code to be a good engineer. You can do it while having a life outside of work and development. That said, it does take effort to go from average or mediocre to becoming a good developer. The rewards are absolutely worth the effort as you will set yourself up for more trust at your current job and be in a better position when applying for a promotion or new role later on. So make a bit of effort now for more rewards later on. Links Join Us On Patreon Level Up Financial Planning