Coding Career Habits

Let's explore the good habits that you can adopt in your coding career.

Habits

“I’m not a great programmer; I’m just a good programmer with great habits.”

- Kent Beck

Because your habits are automatic and regular, they have tremendous compounding power, both good and bad. The authorities on this are James Clear’s Atomic Habits, Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, and Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. They offer more detail than I can do justice to here, so I recommend you read them.

Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. You get what you repeat.

- James Clear

Apply OS concepts in your career

However, it is possible to stretch our “operating systems” analogy further. We can think about how to take the concrete concepts we have learned from half a century of programming operating systems and apply them to the rather fuzzier goal of running our careers and lives.

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