The key to success...

For some time now, I've been thinking about my next blog post here. I had the idea of what I wanted to write, but it took me a while to put it all together. The idea that I had was:

What is the key to success for a developer? What is the one skill or attribute that a developer could have that would increase the likelihood of a long and successful career?

It's not a language
In my view its not a technology skill at all. In my career I've developed software in Pascal, FORTRAN, C (before it had pluses), C++, Java, VB (not proud of that one) and now C#. At one time any of those were the next big thing yet most have faded.

What is it?
I believe that the most important skill that a developer can possess is humility. It's alway fun to watch a developer start a new job. There are several different approaches that I've seen. Many times developers seem to be worried about making their place at a new job. Where do I fit in the pecking order? The natural tendency seems to be to shoot for the top and then fall until you find your spot. In my view, humility is what tells you to start a new job by first doing a lot of listening, and learning when you start. It's much easier to fit in that way.

One of my first jobs was with a small company. The President of the company is one of my personal heroes. One of the things that amazed me was that if the floor needed sweeping, he didn't tell someone to do it, he grabbed the broom. It has taken me a lot of years to realize the wisdom in that. It hard to tell the boss that sweeps the floor that you are 'above' doing something that he asks you to do.

Humility can also assist directly in coding. Like a good math test, programming will reveal a lot of stupid mistakes. Humility will have you checking and rechecking yourself rather than assuming that you got it right the first time.

One habit that I developed several years ago was suggested by Steve McConnell in his book 'Code Complete'. He suggested that you add code to a system in small increments and that you always 'watch your code work' in the debugger first. It takes a little humility (and some time) to do that, but I have found that advice to be invaluable. I've not run into a company yet that has said "I just need the code, I don't care if it works or not"

So there it is....my take on the key to success.