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The Importance of Training in Software Development
(This is a contributed post)
If you’re a developer, frequent training is absolutely vital to keep you at the very top of your game. You may think you know everything there is to know, but you’ll quickly find yourself left behind if you don’t keep your skills sharp. Besides, your company will often be happy to pay for you to undertake a programming course, so there’s unlikely to be any cost to you directly. Here are our top reasons why training is so important.
Accessing funding for training
You may not be able to pay for a course yourself, but if that’s the case, ask your boss to pay for you. By using bookkeeping software like sumsubstance.com.au, they may be able to find some extra funds they didn’t realise they had available which they can spend on helping you gain new skills.
Learning doesn’t end with graduation
There’s a temptation to graduate from your computer science course, get a high flying job as a software developer and feel like you’ve made it. That’s not the case at all. Coding and programming are changing all the time, and if you don’t keep your skills sharp you could get left behind. Programmers get paid so much because it’s a difficult, highly skilled job. The trade-off you make for earning those wages is that you have to constantly keep learning and upskilling yourself. Learning is a lifelong process, not one that ends when you graduate.
Information often goes out of date
The world of programming is in a constant state of flux. Practices that were the norm in 2011 are wildly out of date in 2021. Likewise, what’s best practice now will be hugely out of date by the time 2031 rolls around. Therefore, to maintain longevity in your programming career, you need to be constantly learning. Programming is a well-paying career, but you’ll soon find yourself left behind by rafts of newly graduated practitioners if you don’t treat learning as a lifelong endeavour.
Learn how to become more efficient
You may be an amazing programmer, but we can all improve. Efficiency is one of the most valuable skills a programmer can have. Being able to solve a programming problem in a fraction of the time and with a fraction of the effort of your peers is what will set you apart, and grant you the best opportunities in the future. Also, programmes that are less efficiently built will cause you plenty of headaches down the line. A programme that is clunky, and full of loopholes and workarounds is going to be a complete nightmare to provide support for further down the line.
Unlearn bad habits
Bad habits. We’ve all got them. You may have a sneaky workaround or a way to fudge the code so it works, but only just. Sometimes, we don’t even realise that the way we do things are bad habits. Training can help us unlearn these habits, and develop new, better ones. Most of us try to learn new habits in the hope of becoming better, but unlearning bad ones can be even more helpful.
