Which is the must-have skill required to become a software developer? Good question, I seem to be getting a lot of questions nowadays for which I have only personal answers. Anyway, I personally think it is a problem solving approach. In fact, just skill might not be enough, it might also require a lot of will.
The next important skill is to acknowledge that there can be multiple solutions out there, possibly better ones than you have already thought of. Building a software that is beneficial includes working with the constraints and restrictions under which it has to operate. And to achieve a balance of various parameters requires you to have multiple solutions with you.
If you are wondering why the skills do not include anything about the code, I believe that writing good code also requires the problem solving approach. Almost everything that we do in software development is about solving problems.
February 17th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
A desire to learn new stuff.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
The ability to work with a team.
Unless you’re going to code stuff on your own all the time you’ll end up with a group of other developers, eventually.
That’s where the ’social’, team-based approach comes in.
You might be the best ever to code straight through every task that’s being thrown at you and learn all the new stuff rapidly, but if you cannot participate/communicate/’level’ within a team, you’ll not get very far.
Just my 2 cents…
February 18th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
you forgot “use right tool for the job”, when you say “problem solving” you must use second keyword too, thats how it works.
ask google if you dont believe me (16,100 pages)
http://www.google.pl/search?q=problem+solving+%22right+tool%22
p.s. i love keywords and pointless discussions.
February 20th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Abhijit,
Good article.Agree with you completely.
Thanks
Prashant
February 21st, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Thanks for your inputs. I cannot disagree with any of you, which perhaps means that there are more than one core skills that a software developer must have