This week was my first week in a real software development team, a co-worker and I started working in an internal system team of the company. In this essay, I will share my early experiences in this environment as well as how I see failure and my own personal expectation of software.
Failure
Failure. Lack of success. Not able to achieve something you really put all your effort on. This is something software engineers face every single day, can be while ruining or compiling a project. And yes, you already know where I am going. To fail is to learn.
And, when it comes to software engineering, failure is our everyday bread. In fact, it’s so much in our culture that we have developed software to make something fail. Overall, failing is fine. We can even attempt failure on purpose, but the important thing is to learn from failure. If not, what is the point after all? You also need to make peace with failure, it cannot haunt you for the rest of your life, to do this, you can follow these steps:
- Don’t make it personal: mistakes happen to everyone
- Take stock, learn and adapt: after all, Rome was not build in a day, right?
- Stop dwelling on it: eventually, we have to move on, everybody does, you should too
- Release the need for the approval of others: unless is not a pull request, you don't need to be buddies with everyone
- Try a new point of view: refresh your mind
My first week in a real development team
As I established earlier, this week was the first week I entered a software development team. So far, everything has been great, of course, the nervousness never goes. But now you have the chance to demonstrate what you really know and what are your communication and technical skills.
The first learning I had this week was to have patience in installing the required environments, so many things can go wrong in this part of the process. But you need to stay calm, in the project will run smoothly.
The second thing was pair programming is the most effective to solve bugs. We have been practicing this technique for the past week, and is great because is a rubber duck but your partner also has great ideas!
Personal expectations
It is really difficult to know if you are really good at something, even after years of study and practice. And I think the impostor syndrome is always going to be there, but don't let that stuck you in making good software.
