Smitha Nagar
At Code Camp, you’re learning all the hard skills you need to become a great programmer. The desire to think, the willingness to learn, and the ability to code are all important ingredients for cooking up your recipe of personal fulfillment. However, there’s always a way to become a better programmer, and it’s important to keep in mind that programmers need to master soft skills as well. Here are some (but not all) essential skills you should try to develop to help you succeed in your computer science career.
- Interpersonal skills
Programming isn’t just coding alone in a dark room! Being able to work in a team is one of the most important skills you can have in any job, and computer science is no exception. You’ll always be part of or have a team, and teamwork is essential to making awesome programs and, of course, deadlines. When people work together, they can extract the best aspects of individual ideas to create the best possible program, so make a conscious effort to improve those communication skills.
- Presentation skills
So you’ve finished your project. Now what? Being able to talk to others about what you’ve done is as important as being able to do something. You may be thinking this sounds rather similar to Skill #1, but there is a fine line between the two: interpersonal skills are used more when doing a school project with classmates. Presentation skills are for giving a speech to the class. You’ll need Skill #2 to talk to investors, fellow employees, or your target audience.
- Patience
One word: debugging.
- Attention to detail
This involves more than just spotting syntax errors in your program. It’s the final touches that bring a project together, and being able to handle your work with finesse will improve it ten-fold. This can be anything from using CSS to make your end result look more visually appealing, to reading into your client’s expression and pinpointing what they’re looking for, to sitting back, closing your eyes, and going over what exactly you feel you need to make your project how you envisioned it to be.
- But seriously, Patience
Half of your time as a programmer will probably be spent debugging, and this can get rather stressful and frustrating sometimes. It’s important to be able to take a step back, see the “grand picture” that you’re working towards, and calm yourself down. This will not only help your own health and wellbeing, but will also help you find the source of the bug much faster and get you back to happily coding away in no time.
Overall, the main takeaway from this is that your coding ability is a significant, but not the only, factor for developing your potential as a programmer. These other skills that many people often don’t associate with computer scientists are often what make a good programmer great.
Code Camp 2015 