How I became (and stayed) a successful programmer

The article argues that a long programming career depends on three habits: working with people who are better than you, taking on tasks outside your comfort zone, and trying to answer questions on your own first. The author says these choices helped him improve over time and reach his goal of working at Basecamp.

Reading notes

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• He looks for jobs where he can work with programmers who are clearly better than him, because learning from them keeps him improving.
• Around stronger programmers, he pays attention to how they think, how they solve problems, how they communicate, and what patterns appear in their code.
• He says there should usually be someone better than you, and that being in that situation gives you a lot to gain.
• He recommends leaving your comfort zone now and then, because it challenges established ideas and opens room for new ways of thinking.
• He gives examples from Java, Android, open source work, Kotlin, and learning Trix, and says these experiences were difficult and uncomfortable.
• He says those hard tasks helped him work with different programmers, catch up with technologies he had fallen behind on, and learn new things that made him better.
• He values independence and usually tries to solve problems himself before asking for help.
• He says this builds resourcefulness, earns respect for other people’s time and work, and develops creativity.
• He ends by saying that being a successful programmer takes hard work, but these strategies served him well over the long run.