If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
One thing that has helped me maintain satisfaction and success in this profession is quite simple. Always make sure you are having fun. Don't get caught up in meaningless chases to be better than person X. If you can acknowledge that you will never know it all, and that there is always someone who knows more than you do, you open yourself up to chart your own course for how you navigate your career path. Making decisions that are actually right for you, not because you "think" you need to do it. When I look back to when I first started to right now, there is not a single point along the way where I can say that I was not having an absolute blast doing what I was doing. Even when I was not using agile methodologies, or big into unit testing, I put a high priority on having fun and exercising the creative nature of the work that we do!! Keep it fun, and the rest will follow. For the Christian developers out there you may also appreciate these words from the bible, that I read a looooong time ago and have always kept close to my heart:
Source: How Did I Get Started In Software Development? By Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo
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