Hello my readers and welcome back to my blog. Today I am going to write about another Apprenticeship Pattern called Expose Your Ignorance. I totally agree that it might sounds weird when you hear it but you will change your mind by the end of this blog post.

You have just started working for a company, its your first job and everyone expects a lot from you. You are now a Software Developer and its time to show your skills. Too much pressure I know!!

This chapter of the book talks about how you should not hide what you don’t know as that will make you more ignorant. Everyday of the job and everyday of our life is a learning process for everyone and you don’t make an exception. The authors strongly encourage every software developer out there (especially the inexperienced ones) to expose their ignorance by asking questions. By asking questions you are letting your team know that you want to learn and lower the level of ignorance.

Pride! Ahh pride, this is what holds most of the people back. I totally get it that it’s easier said than done, but you should really leave your pride aside when learning. Yes its true, you can go and do your own research about the matter but that it going to take you a bigger amount of time compared to the situation where you can just ask your teammate or your manager.

If my close friends were to read this blog post would say: “Look who’s talking!”. Yep I got the same issue, I am very afraid to the idea that my teammates will think how inexperienced or ignorant I am so I just keep going on my own and stress myself until I find the answers of my questions. However I have realized that working in a team with a great environment makes it way easier to address to your teammates or manager for questions you might have.

So yeah..long story short: Ask questions about what you don’t know or need to know! But keep in mind to try to shorten the list of the things you don’t know soon. There will be times where the list will get longer than usual and sometimes shorter but as you choose the shortest path to expose your ignorance, you will notice that by the end on the trip you will be an expert. Don’t get discouraged, ASK!

Hello dear readers. Welcome back to my next blog post. This time will be talking about enthusiasm in your new/current work place.

This chapter of the book  talks about how to feel and what to do about your enthusiasm at your work place, being that a new or current environment. I believe these advises would mostly apply to a new work environment as in an old environment you already know your coworkers and your boss. The author gives credits to people with enthusiasm and strongly supports them to unleash and keep the spirit up.

Getting into a new work environment it is indeed a bit hard, especially when that is your first job. When it comes to choosing a job, unfortunately you can’t really know what kind of team and people you are going to work on unless you have been recommended for that job. So being nervous is FINE. And I was crazy nervous in my interview and first week of my job.

I have heard a lot of stories about teams with employees who don’t accept suggestions or new ideas and especially when those are coming from a new employee and a recent graduated student. If you were to read their face, it would say only one thing: YOU DON’T KNOW. At that point it is time to move up and get to your manager and if you are still not heard I truly think is time to move on. But always keep your spirit and enthusiasm up because just because those people don’t accept new ideas doesn’t mean you are wrong.

Never hold back on ideas and always express them. A good team will listen to your idea and will take it in consideration and will explain why that might or not be a good idea. Nobody was experienced on their first jobs! Its true that these new team you are in might know more than you but you might know something they don’t and that’s a plus to the team productivity.

Keep in mind that nobody knows everything. Try to find the person who you think would listen and welcome your ideas. Also accept critics, its very important for your development.

Hi dear readers. Welcome back/all to my next blog post about the next Pattern. The next Pattern I am going to write today is about ‘Reading List’. Yep you heard it right! Reading List! Just because you are a developer doesn’t mean that you got no more reading to do.

This Pattern in the book talks about how to start with a reading list and how to keep up with it. The authors make very good points when they say that its hard to even start a reading list as you might not be sure what to read first. I like how one of the recommendations is to ask your mentor/professor. They would be the people who know your development level better than anyone and will definitely be a great help. Another point to keep in mind is that the initial Reading List you have created might (probably will) change after you have finished one of them. Having a Reading List is great because it also makes you reflect about what you read previously.

As mentioned in the book, we should always think and analyze about the book we just read and try to figure out on our own on what should be the next book to read. Computer Science is one of these field that new things will  always keep coming up and what better than books will be describing these new innovations. Indeed these new books should be on top of the list.

I believe that there will be cases where you/me as a reader will be disappointed on one or more books. It’s not right that just because one book was not good enough, we should stop reading other books. I think that when you don’t find a book interesting or good enough, it’s a good sign as you are thinking about the book content. This will give you a better understanding on what you would like to read next and what is your favorite area. For example, for my reading lots of books about programming languages wouldn’t be too much interesting. On the other hand there are people who love reading each and every book about programming languages and this is because they’re passionate about it.

I would recommend to just start somewhere, and then you will be able to figure out on what to jump on next.

Hi dear readers and welcome back to my blog. Today I am going to talk about another Pattern that I read from the book Apprenticeship Patterns. This blog post will be about familiar tools.

Once we start working or coding on our own we start to like and choose which tools we like and which ones we do not. It is just a matter of time for us to figure it out. Once we do though, its hard to switch. When I started coding, I was only learning tools that were recommended from our professors in school and as I was ‘scared’ to experiment I always choose not to switch even if I didn’t like it. Going to work and school at the same time was amazing as I was facing new tools in both environments and I was able to tell which ones I liked and found more useful and made me more productive. And as the book says, once you find your favorite tools, its hard to switch!!

This chapter talked about how all of us have our own favorite tools and we find it hard to switch even if the productivity sake is in risk. It would be our decision on weather to give up our tools or not but we have to face consequences. At the same time, just because a tool is great for you don’t mean it will  be great for someone else. Something that you might find easy, might be hard for someone else.

There is one example I would like to give for this Pattern. I started to use Eclipse on my second semester of Computer Science and I wasn’t crazy about it, but as we had just transited from BlueJ was very cool. Two semester later is when I started my job and over there the developers were using more advances IDEs and I was very excited to learn and get familiar. Eclipse went out of my list right when I learned about Illuminated Clouds. Very ‘smart’ IDE! However, Eclipse was still the only option in school and I was hating it and started to recommend to other people. Some of my friends found it very useful to use and some others already loved Eclipse for what it was.

Last but not least, I really liked the recommendation from the book that was suggesting to have developers create a list for all familiar tools and keep researching is the list was smaller than 5. All of us will probably change lots of jobs and lots of companies will have their tools, but its always good to have your own area of expertise.

Hope you guys found this blog useful…Stay tuned for the next Pattern from this cool book!

Hi dear readers. Welcome back to my blog. From now on I will be writing for different Apprenticeship Patterns that I will find interesting in the book to share with you.

I started computer science with 0 knowledge in coding, programming languages or anything else related to this world that I find beautiful nowadays. My very first programming language was the famous Java and not because it was my choice but because my first contact with coding was in Intro to Programming (CS-140) and the teacher had chosen Java as a language. Now that I think back three years ago, I am happy that I started my software craftsmanship with Java.

A summary of ‘Your First Language’ Apprenticeship Pattern would be that if you start your journey different from me (in the meaning that you can choose your first language), the book recommends you to research about it and try to figure out what is the most suitable language from you. It doesn’t have to be one of the most popular language but as every language has its own characteristics you got to pick the one you find more easy (or hard, if you like to challenge yourself). If you don’t trust your research skills than you can ask your friends who are familiar with programming languages and they will  be able to tell you the differences between a few languages and why they like what they like. Learning the language is not the only step of the process as you will be using this language forever to solve different problems you might come across. Remember, switching is always an option..

Most of my friends had started programming with Python which I have heard is a very easy language to learn and use. I remember when I started to learn Java I used to try and solve other problems (as much as I could) so I would get practice and in my first problems I was not using any other libraries. Practice is the key, believe me! A language is easy to learn but it has a lot of volume. Once my boss said: “Its not the language we should memorize, its the data structure” and I totally agree as in your journey you will work in different companies that will use different languages.

I really like that this is the first pattern included in the book as the first language is the first contact you have with coding. And don’t forget..Practice 🙂