Here are some of the subjects and general
topics that you should familiarize yourself with to achieve mastery in
software development.
by Alexsandro Souza Feb 20, 2018
A
software developer’s job description goes well beyond mere computer
programming. Many roles require that developers embrace taking part in
the full lifecycle of software development and strive to improve the
overall product by researching alternative ways and technologies to
achieve the overall goal.
Being a master in software development is about knowing the
full software development processes and having considerable expertise in
the key parts of the process.
It requires an understanding of the nuances of design
patterns and algorithms while following the best practices of software
development, and an ability to be creative and think outside the box to
offer logical solutions for programming problems.
Recently I wrote an article about the expert-specialist in the software development industry and the characteristics of this type of professional, which is important in order to become a master in developing software.
Achieving mastery in the IT industry requires skills in
server-side development, client-side development, DevOps, cloud
computing, web design, distributed system, database, programming
principles, code management, infrastructure management, scalability,
security and much more.
While you won’t reasonably be able to master all of the
above, you should try to understand most of them on a superficial level
and deep-dive into several of these points.
Below is a list of essential points that experienced
developers often lack but which a master engineer should be familiar
with when applying for a lead position.
Programming Principles
Coding principles help to ensure good coding practice and
concrete product development. Some of the most important Coding
Principles to know are:
DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself), SOLID, Object Catallistic, TDD, and Defensive Programming.
Design Patterns
Design patterning is a general, reusable solution to a
commonly occurring problem. It is important to know some common DPs, and
most importantly, to be able to identify the right pattern to a given
problem. Some design patterns are a must have for a good developer, such
as MVC, Singleton, DAO, Facade, Proxy, Adapter, Strategy and Abstract
Factory.
Server-side Development
In complex systems, there are all kinds of logic that happen
in the background and as a back-end developer, we face many challenges
in processing business logic in an application. Any developer can write
code, but the only experienced developer can write quality code with
performance, scalability and reliability. The process of developing good
software involves a lot of science and it is very important to know how
to deal with:
Caching
you must know various mechanisms of caching data (file, database, memory, reverse proxy, HTTP...)
Memory Management
Java has automatic memory management with a
nice Garbage Collector that cleans up unused objects and frees up some
memory. However, a master Java programmer needs to have a good
understanding of how memory actually works, as this gives the advantage
of writing high-performance and optimized applications. It is essential
to know about:
Stack, Heap, Strong Reference, Weak Reference, Soft
Reference, Escape reference, how Strings are referenced, Garbage
Collection Process, Metaspace and Garbage collector types.
Exception Handling
This is a very important and large topic, and I will write a
dedicated post about it soon, but for now, some good practices when
handling exceptions are:
- Make your software reliable following the 'fail first' principle;
- Do not catch exceptions you can not recover from;
- Do not log your exception and then rethrow it;
- Choose the right layer to handle the exceptions (e.g your DAO does not know the right decision for a database failure, but your service might know it);
- Prefer unchecked exception if you cannot recover from it.
IO Operation
Being aware of the cost of IO operation and the possible unpredictable results.
Asynchronous Programming
Asynchronous programming in Java is achieved using
Threads. It is a fundamental part of the Java platform. Using
concurrency effectively is essential for building high-performance
applications.
Words such as thread pools, data race, deadlocks, countdown
latches, producer-consumer, atomicity, immutable objects, Futures, and
Semaphore should not be something new for a master Java developer.
Batch Processing
Writing a batch job is very common and usually does important tasks. There are some basic rules to be aware of:
- Every task should be divided by input, processor and output;
- Always poll data input in batches;
- Processor should be thread-safe;
- Output should be atomic;
- Store job results;
- Consider using EIP patterns.
Distributed Computing
In the modern world, distributed computing refers to the
use of distributed systems to solve computational problems, however,
distributed systems are different from conventional non-distributed
systems and they add a lot of complexity to systems. Having experience
in working in a distributed system will make a difference when a system
starts growing and consuming more resources. Microservice software
architecture is a good example of distributed computing and all the
benefits and trade-offs of a distributed architecture. I am responsible
for an open source project which provides a bootstrap to help people
start a professional microservice architecture in a few minutes. I have
written about the whole architecture here and also I recorded some videos showing how to use it here.
Definitely, microservices is something that is a required
skill nowadays and it will require a lot of experience with distributed
systems. It is important to have a good understanding of fault
tolerance, availability vs. consistency, distributed transactions,
distributed events, synchronous and asynchronous communication,
distributed authentication, decentralized applications, applications of
consensus, and more.
Database
Understand exactly what happens when data is sought from
the database and all costs involved, connection handshake, data
transmission, etc. It's also very important to have a clear
understanding of atomic transactions and how to make sure your data is
consistent.
Database is for managing data and this by itself is a tough
task; don’t even think about adding business logic into your database.
In large systems, database have already many challenges with security,
scalability, capacity, and availability. Database management is a
desired skill from a master software developer and at some point in
time, you will be challenged to think about encryption, replication,
sharding, Big Data and more. Knowing how a database works and how to
optimize it along with the cost of each operation (e.g. reading is more
memory intensive, writing more CPU) will help design efficiently the
data management of your system.
DevOps
A master developer needs to be able to promote the DevOps
cultural philosophies and practices and advocate automation and
monitoring at all steps in order to increase the organization’s ability
to deliver applications and services at high quality and velocity.
Deploying code or provisioning infrastructure must be automated,
flexible, and monitored. A great developer should know well the
development cycle from integration, testing, releasing to deployment and
infrastructure management. In order to achieve it, you will need to
know about cloud computing, Linux, networking, containers, artifacts
management, and more.
Code Management
Given the importance of code, it is only natural that only
master developer is able to care of the code lifecycle and promoting
engineering best practice. For that, he will need to know well a source
code management system and have clear understanding of branching
strategy, versioning, distributed revision control system, code quality
guarantee tools, code communication, dependency management,
configuration management, and much more.
Security
Web security is very hard to achieve and depends on a lot
of external parameters; however, we need to follow the best practices
and general guidelines for building secure web applications. A master
engineer needs to have a good understanding of information security, not
only how to avoid building insecure and vulnerable systems, but also
how to protect customers privacy.I have written about privacy by design here.
A great developer needs to be able to create a guideline to
handle beyond the top 10 web application security risks. In the web
application, we have many more security threats that need engineering
action, including:
- Uploaded file check;
- Brute force protection;
- Session expiration handler;
- Session origin validation;
- Secure communication over the internet;
- Secure Cookie access;
- Credentials handling.
Front-end Development
A front-end development is a very important part of a
software and you will not be a master software engineer if you don't
know how programming and user-experience meet. So far I have avoided
naming technologies, but in the front-end world, Javascript and CSS are a
must-have for a software engineer. It's not easy to achieve mastery in
both but is very important to understand how they work and how both,
along with HTML connect, enable us to provide a great user-experience.
To lead a front-end team, you will need to know more than
how to build a beautiful layout, front-end development goes beyond, and
you will need to know
- What is possible to build using browsers as engine;
- How to develop responsive websites; how to improve website performance;
- How to develop a single page application;
- How to build a modern and efficient development environment;
- Be familiar with the new HTML5 APIs.
Web development is huge area and in order to master in this
matter, the developer will need to be self-motivated, proactive in
learning new technologies and wear many hats during your career. Keep
challenging yourself and you will get better at problem-solving, which
is the essence of programming. Knowledge is important, critical in some
cases, but in a field that changes so quickly, how you go about get that
knowledge is more important than what you know at any given time.
