Essential Software Development Career + Technical Guide

CHAPTER ONE: Intro

• Introduction

CHAPTER TWO: Should You Become a Developer?

• Should I Become a Software Engineer/Developer?
• What Is a Day as a Software Engineer Like?
• Production Issues
• Why Should I Want to Work as a Software Engineer?
• Where Do Software Engineers Work?

CHAPTER THREE: What to Learn in High School

• What Should I Learn in High School to Help Me Become a Software Engineer?
• Learning a Programming Language
• General Overview of Aspects of Programming Languages
• What Programming Language to Learn First?
• Why Should You Learn Programming?
• How to Learn Programming for Beginners?

CHAPTER FOUR: What Computer to Buy

• Which Type of OS/Computer Should You Buy for School/College for Someone Interested in Being a Software Engineer?
• Why Not Linux? Most Web Servers Are Linux.
• What Hardware Do You Need for Your Windows PC?

CHAPTER FIVE: College      

• Choosing a College/School to Be a Computer Software Engineer
• So How Do You Decide Your College/Major?
• College Locations
• Can You Become a Software Engineer without a Degree?
• What Does a Software Engineer Education Cost?
• How Much Do Software Engineers Make Out of College?
• Co-Op

Intern Programs

One Person’s Experience

A Company that Helped Manage Money

A Consumer Electronics Firm

For My Company with a Friend—Not Co-Op

A Small Start-Up Document Imaging Company

• Planning Your College Courses with an Eye toward a Software Engineering Job/Programming
• General Electives
• What Computer Language Classes to Take?
• Planning to Transfer in the Future?
• If You Prefer to Go Full-On Computer Science
• Surviving College as a Computer Science Major (or a Variation of That)
• Computer Labs/Home Computers, Assignments, and More
• Multi-Person Programming Projects
• Some Other General Trivia
• What Do You Do If You Have Trouble with Your Classes?
• When You Have Finished Your Degree

CHAPTER SIX: What They May Not Teach You in School

• What They May Not Teach You in School about Working as a Software Engineer
• Time Management
• Source Control and Branching
• Business Focus/Prioritization
• The Rules and Business
• Working with Others and the Art of Influence and Leadership
• Continual Improvement
• Creativity
• What Do You Want?
• Creating Your Own Opportunities or Taking Advantage of Them
• Perfect Is the Enemy of Done/Money
• Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Auditing, Etc.
• Coding for a Production Environment
• Professionalism
• The Art of What You Should or Shouldn’t Say No To
• Interviewing
• Working with Your Manager
• Managing Stress
• Teamwork

CHAPTER SEVEN: Where to Work

• Here Are Some of the Best Places to Work for a Software Engineer
• How Company Size Can Affect Your Experience
• Regulated vs. Unregulated
• Working in a Place You Like the Most
• Organization Culture
• What Area of Software Engineering Should I Go Into?
• Which Tech Stack Should You Learn/Work In?

CHAPTER EIGHT: Preparing to Find a Job

• Your Resume
• Consulting
• W-2 vs. 1099 vs. Corp to Corp
• 1099
• Corp to Corp
• Consulting vs. Full Time
• A Consulting Gig
• What Is a Full Stack Developer?
• Staffing Firms and Recruiters
• Do You Need Certifications?
• Finding a Job
• Colleagues, Friends, and Family

CHAPTER NINE: Interviewing

• Portfolios
• Things You Should Do to Prep for the Interview
• Some Example Interview Questions
• Things You Should Know
• Recruiter Screening
• Initial Screening
• Interview (the Main Event)
• Salary

CHAPTER TEN: Starting a New Job

• Working with Others
• Impressions
• What Does It Mean to Be a Good Team Member?
• Developing Large Features or Software Products
• Mentor

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Deadlines, Estimates, Communication, Notes

• Early Career: Software Engineering Deadlines, Target Dates, and Estimates
• What Should You Do About Estimates And Deadlines?
• Early Career: Team, Internal, External Conversations/Messaging
• Keep Track of What You Need to Do
• Keep Track of What You Learn

CHAPTER TWELVE: Working with Your Manager

• What Does Your Manager Want?
• Take Control of Your Career
• Act Professional
• Communicating with Upper Management
• Managing Up
• The Power of Taking Responsibility

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Mindset and Psychology

• Think Like an Owner
• The Power of Positivity
• Impostor Syndrome
• Don’t Be a Jerk
• Change—The Only Constant

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Continuous Learning

• Programming Language
• Constant Learning
• Team Presentations

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Getting a Promotion/Raise

• Job Titles
• What Purpose Do Job Titles Have?
• How Do You Get a Promotion/Raise?
• Titles, Role, Responsibilities, Money
• Be Introspective

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Changing Jobs/Roles

• Leave on Good Terms
• Counteroffers
• Changing Teams

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Career

• LinkedIn
• Making Money from Your Own Software
• Write an Android/IOS App, Websites, Desktop App, Etc.
• Marketing
• Publishing Your Software
• Book Authoring
• Your Company Has Been Bought—Now What?
• Avoiding Layoffs

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Process: Waterfall

                Critiques against Waterfall

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Process: Practical Agile with Scrum

• Scrum In the Real World for Software Development
• What is Agile?
• Agile Software Development Process Pros and Cons
• Mitigating the Cons of Agile
• Agile Sprints/Iterations
• Agile Is Not Waterfall
• What Is Scrum?
• Daily Scrum
• Scrum Roles
• Planning, Grooming, Reveal, and Retro
• Sprint Planning
• The Reveal
• The Retrospective (or Just Retro)
• Backlog Grooming
• Scrum of Scrums
• Tracking Progress
• Agile with Scrum How To
• Agile While Managing New Features and Support
• You Created Your Stories for Your Project, but Now You Need a Plan—Agile Project Plan
• Builds/Continuous Integration
• Agile Body Snatchers

CHAPTER TWENTY: Process: Requirements

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Process: Architecture/Design

• Architecture/Design
• Enterprise Architecture (EA) Frameworks
• The Open Group Architectural Framework (TOGAF)
• Whole System Level Architecture Patterns
• Designing Resilient/Redundant Systems
• Discussions
• UX Design
• A Simplistic Architecture Approach
• High-Level Solution Proposals
• Incremental Action Plan

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Process: Source Control Management

• Source Control Management
• Functionality and Workflow
• Branch Plans
• Workflow and Branch Plans
• Gitflow Branching
• Source Control Products

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Process: Implementation

• Implementing a Feature/Bug Fix
• Unit Testing
• Test Driven Development (TDD)
• Pair Programming
• Logging
• Testing a Feature/Bug Fix
• Builds/Continuous Integration
• Merging the Change
• Should You Comment Code—Write Them, How Much, or Not?
• Software Development Environment
• How to Write Cleaner, More Understandable Code
• Environments
• Dev-Ops
• What Are the Main Correlating Factors to the Introduction of Bugs?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Process: Testing/Validation

• Testing
• Automation Testing
• Integration Testing
• Fuzz Testing
• Parity Testing
• Performance Testing
• Validation

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Process: Deployment

• Deployment
• Old/New (A/B) Deployments
• Rollbacks

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Process: Production

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Process: Support

• Coding, Testing
• Cost
• Performance and Hardware
• Deployment
• Logging
• Tracing
• Time Syncing
• Network/Application Tracing
• Monitoring
• Alerting
• Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) or Runbook
• Training
• Escalation Process for Critical Incidents
• Operational Impact
• How to Handle Support with Agile Scrum Teams
• Prioritizing Investigations/Escalation Process for Noncritical Incidents

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Process: Audits

• Audits in Highly Regulated Environments
• Preparing for an Audit
• What Should You Expect during an Audit?

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: General Development

• Languages
• Algorithms/Data Structures
• Naming Classes, Methods, Properties, Etc.
• Building Software to Reduce Risks and Handle/Recover from Errors
• Code Performance and Improving
• Code Reviews
• Principles
• Getting in the Zone
• Windows Debugging
• Overengineering
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
• Thinking Like Your Customer
• Solving Hard Critical Support Issues
• Avoid Duplicating Code
• Improving Testing
• User Interfaces
• Technical Disagreements
• Deciding If You Should Fix a Bug Now
• Testing Private Methods
• Coupling / Decoupling
• Root Cause Analysis
• Understanding Hardware
• Networking
• File Systems
• XML/HTML/CSS
• Resource Utilization
• Prototyping
• Windowing Systems
• Double Check Locking
• Unicode
• Security
• Privacy
• Public Key Crypto Systems
• Exception Handling
• Proof of Concept (POC)
• Object Oriented Languages
• Software Patterns
• Upgrade Path
• If I Have a Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail
• Fail Early
• Asserts
• Contracts
• Operating Systems
• Databases
• Data Science
• Dependency Injection
• Time Use for Event Ordering
• How to Handle Tech Debt
• Open Source Software
• Data Pipelines
• Context and Notetaking
• Managed Languages
• Floating Point Numbers
• NP_Complete Problems
• C# Using Var
• Perceived Speed
• Holy Wars
• Message Streaming
• Should You Learn Assembly Language?
• Writing Apps for Profit and Fun
• Will AI Replace Software Engineers
• Highly Regulated Environments
• Recursion
• Cross-Platform Development
• Rate Limiting Algorithms
• Plugin Framework
• Discrete Math
• Finite-State Machine
• Compiler/Interpreter Design
• Deterministic Disposal at End of Function Scope
• Data Objects
• .NET Source Code

CHAPTER THIRTY: Multithreading

• Threading Synchronization Primitives
• Threading Topics
• Threading Issues
• Threading Patterns
• Multithreaded Events
• Does Your Sleep(0) Smell?

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Time Management

• Email
• Which Communication Method to Use?

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Management

• Intro
• How to Become a Software Engineering Manager
• One on Ones
• Performance Discussions
• Compensation Discussions
• Don’t Micromanage
• Planning a Project
• Time Off
• The Power of Questions
• Role in Scrum
• Role as Architect
• People Reviews (Yearly or Ideally More Often)
• Project Management
• Mentoring/Career Path
• Employee Concerns
• Project Details
• Example Day in the Life of an Engineering Manager
• Team Size
• Managing Management Expectations vs. Team Capability
• Delegating
• Staffing/Hiring
• Onboarding
• Outsourcing of Development Work
• Team Collaboration
• Managing Large Multi-Team Projects
• Project Manager(s)
• Dependency Management
• Scrum of Scrums Meetings
• Be an Advocate for Your Team/Members
• Compensation
• The Gray Area
• Clean Up Your Backlog
• Aligning Code with Your Teams
• When/What to Escalate?
• Agile Team Management

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: General Topics

• When Good Architecture Isn’t Good Right Now
• How to Reduce Overhead Costs for Your Business—Keep Processes Under Control!
• Reinvention
• Generating Ideas/Solutions
• Failure
• Turning Failure into Success
• Integrity and Playing Fair
• Cryptocurrency
• Ideal vs. Practical
• Rant On Why Software Architecture Is Not Exactly Like Building Architecture
• Operations and DBA Teams
• Why Patch Rather Than Fix?
• Computer Science and Life
• Third Party Products/Libraries
• Why Is X More Reliable Than Software?
• Diagnosing Windows Issues
• Staying Safe in the Digital Age
• Your Own Website
• Smaller Releases
• Impact on Society
• How to Be the Worst Software Engineer
• Useful Tools and Websites
• Best Developer Blogs
• Reading List

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Notable Software/Technologies

• Windows
• Linux/Unix
• Android
• iOS
• Machine Learning
• Docker Containers/Kubernetes
• NoSQL

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: Appendix

• Sites/Links/Information
• More Information / Errata
• Dedication