9 Most Inspiring Stories for Software Developers
Pen Magnet
1M+ views on Medium, Writer in Tech, Programming and Interview Skills, Author of the popular Programmer Interview eBook
Programmers are poor creatures. They often spend their youth confined inside a tiny cubicle or home laptop desk.
Software is soon to be labeled as the blue collar of 21st century:
https://medium.com/swlh/software-burnout-is-for-real-66092705e2f7
At any unfortunate day, they are either laid off, or are abandoned with no visible path to career growth. The world suddenly comes crashing down.
Addictions creep in. Stress piles up. Breakups happen. Breakdowns — imminent.
Their thoughts range from “Why me?” to “Why I didn’t take up that low-paid python offer that my classmate took, making two grand a year now?”
Unlike cliche quotes from motivational speakers, programmers need intellectual booster.
Here goes 9 stories that seemed most inspiring and resourceful to me during my low points.
#1 — The Science Behind Viral Apps (and How to Build One)
If you get just this one thing right, you don’t need any sort of substantial marketing budget to keep growing…
As a long time app developer, this one is closest to my heart. It addresses the holy grail question of any digital business: How to go viral.
The Science Behind Viral Apps (and How to Build One)
It goes on to explain the basics of consumer behaviour that converts into successful sale of a software product. But beyond this explanation, it also proposes strategies that convert, and those that don’t, and why.
Among other things, it shows that if you get just this one thing right, you don’t need any sort of substantial marketing budget to keep growing.
It cites how Uber and Dropbox used referrals to their advantage, leveraging the secrets of viral marketing. It also explains how Quora, Facebook and Instagram manages to keep you glued to them for several hours a day.
#2 — How To Grow And Scale Your Business Without Hiring More People
The entire business world has figured out how to make huge buckets of money without hiring us to work for them.
Michael Moore
This super popular story comes under Marketing umbrella.
However, nothing can be more relevant, because most developers who are wannabe entrepreneurs strangle their dream fearing the lack of funding requirements for setting up a team.
You shouldn’t be asking whether to use bots or not. You better ask when to start using them.
It emphasises the growing importance of bots to support customer engagement demand for your businesses. For anyone who questions their importance, they have already arrived. You shouldn’t be asking whether to use them or not. You better ask when and how to leverage them for your business.
How to grow and scale your business without hiring more people.
Why the future of customer acquisition is all in the conversations
#3 — How to Grow as a Data Scientist:
If you entered software development in the last decade, chances are high you have considered data science as your potential career for life.
If you are confused what path to take, and how to pursue it, this story is for you:
How to Grow as a Data Scientist
What skills do you need to go from Jr. to Sr. developer
#4 — What Is A Quantum Computer:
Future generations will know there’s nothing mystical about wetware because by 2100, Moore’s law will have given us tiny quantum computers powerful enough to upload a human soul.
Frank Tipler
Last decade saw rise of not just data science. Enthusiastic programmers got entranced by crypto. However, initial wave of crypto-craziness got swept away by high volatility and sleazy fundraising of some overambitious crypto-founders.
But there is one revolution that’s not so much in the cradle now, and it can alter the course of both crypto and data science at large: Quantum computers. When materialised fully, they will change everyone’s imagination of world’s computing power.
This is because they completely overturn traditional 8/16/32/64 bit computing paradigm in the favour of qubits.
If you want to get the basic idea of how they operate, this comprehensive article is just for you.
What Is A Quantum Computer?
Explained with a simple example
It will tremendously assist you to envision your software career in the next decade, for sure.
#5 — Build Your Own Twitter Bot:
Resources do not inspire you. When utilised, they enable you to inspire yourself.
Nothing big, nothing fancy. And that’s what programmers need when they feel low: Build something to make their day.
This story packages a lot of useful programming concepts: Heroku, API consumption and Node.js.
Why you should have your own Twitter bot, and how to build one in less than 30 minutes
Most importantly, just in 30 minutes + reading time, it gives you the Aha moment — the thing that made you a programmer in the first place.
It is a strong reminder to the fact that resources rarely inspire you. When utilised, they enable you to inspire yourself.
#6— How To Build Your Brand As a Personal Developer:
Developers are very poor at promoting themselves. While majority of us chase managerial positions to
increase their pay or just survive in the industry
, steadfast ones want to remain a coder for life.
Developers, Do Not Get Promoted
Tortoise will always beat the hare.
For those tireless stallions, here goes a personal branding tutorial:
How to build your personal brand as a new developer
While you are slogging it out 24X7 for your employer, do not forget to spend just 5 minutes a day to build your personal brand as developer. After a year, you will be amazed to see what you have accomplished.
#7— How to Build a Startup Empire without Selling Your Freedom
Every developer has a burning desire to make it big some day with his technical prowess. It may not be dominant. It maybe hidden beneath the layers of his persona. Or it may simply trying to weed out questions of money, work-life balance, and self-doubt.
How to Build a Startup Empire without Selling Your Freedom
Finding a startup to work for is easy. Finding a founder whose vision you believe in isn’t.
The story glorifies fresh breed of bootstrapped startups such as Ahref, MailChimp and JotForm, who not only built their dreams, but made them huge by incrementally adding to it their blood and sweat.
#8 — How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425 million or more
It describes why big players are always not at a vantage point as the rest of us usually think.
This story has a lot of hard facts that any aspirant software entrepreneur cannot afford to miss.
How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425 million or more
Atlassian bought Trello for $425 million. Because Trello was on trajectory to kill Atlassian.
It describes how an unassuming kid on the street can challenge a giant, and earn its true potential. It describes how money moves inside software industry, how big corporations think, and why big players are always not at a vantage point as the rest of us usually think.
#9 — How I Eat For Free in NYC Using Python, Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and Instagram
You don’t even need to build a company / raise funds to retire soon.
This article is a goldmine of mind-blowing insights into modern indie software development. The article revolves around 4 key ingredients of successful strategy on how it is really built. You have got:
- An influencer platform
- It has an API
- You know how to build a bot
- You know basic data science stuff
If you have these, you don’t even need to build a company / raise funds to retire early. (The developer here hasn’t apparently retired, but there is no caveat that prevents you from doing so.)
Here goes the link:
How I Eat For Free in NYC Using Python, Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and Instagram
Living and working in the big apple comes with big rent.
Bonus Story:
“The Pragmatic Programmer” Is Essential Reading for Software Developers
This story, about the book “The Pragmatic Programmer” completely changes one’s mental paradigm about programming.
When I first read it, I was reminded of a
. However, this one is about a book that goes quite deep.
While it begins by emphasizing that programming is not just your everyday engineering, it goes deeper by focusing on the devil of the details. The book touches every aspect of the programming process: How you structure your code parts, how you decouple, how you delegate work amongst your colleagues and how you define ownership.
If programming is your genuine career choice that’s coming from the heart rather than just a tool to pay your bills, go for it (and maybe also the book).
“The Pragmatic Programmer” Is Essential Reading for Software Developers
Conclusion:
Like any other business, software development has its own highs and lows. The good thing is, in days of internet, reaching your muse is not as hard as reaching your goal.
Keep reading, keep building great stuff.
Originally published on Medium.com