So as a junior developer,
what could you typically expect to work on?
Let's talk about that in today's video.
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(upbeat music)
Welcome back, my name is Tim Buchalka
with another programming tip of the day.
And we're talking about a junior developer
and what you'd typically would work on
when you're starting out.
Now, obviously, a junior developer
is probably going to be someone
who's starting their very first programming job,
so when you come into an organisation
as a junior developer,
you're going to have other people supervising your work
and you're probably gonna start on some basic things.
So, you'll probably spend a fair amount of time,
initially with documentation.
You would do a lot of reading.
If you've come in to learn the programming language
and you don't know that, they'll probably send you off
to do a course like perhaps one of mine
or a book or something like that.
Or even a bootcamp or something
to get you up to speed
with particular programming language.
But if you already know a programming language
and you're coming into a team, then the documentation
might consist more of learning the actual code base
and whether a project or projects
the company's actually working on.
Now, you'll start pretty basic.
Most junior developers don't get in there
and don't get a hands on access to the full code base.
You'll probably, depending on the size of the team,
get access to part of the code base,
but it will probably, typically, be read only access.
In other words, you won't be able to
commit any changes directly yourself.
Because you can imagine that there's a huge organisation
or even like a mid-size organisation,
they've got a code base, a code that's tested
and a number of developers have worked on.
If someone comes in and doesn't know what they're doing,
and makes a change and makes a mistake,
obviously, that change can be committed and updated
and it's going to break a lot of code everywhere.
So consequently, there's a learning process
that a junior developer or really any developer
coming into a new code base needs to learn.
But particularly, as a junior developer,
you'll need to learn those skills.
So you'll need to learn even things like version control,
using Git or another repository.
If you don't know those skills,
you'll be sort of tasked with learning that
or being told that you'll need to learn that.
So, you'll go through these basic things first.
Learning the building blocks.
And then gradually, you'll get to the stage where
you're asked to make some changes.
Now that'll generally be pretty simple ones.
For example, you might be working as a junior web developer
and there might be a typo on the screen somewhere,
and your change may be
to find where that is in the code base
and fix the typo.
Really basic things, but, it's done for a reason.
It's getting you started to understand
and learn the code base and to find out where things are
and just to gradually build your skills up over time.
So that's typically the sort of things
you have to start with, and then over time,
you'll start moving on to more and more advanced things
and perhaps you've eventually get to the stage
and you're working on a single method
that perhaps has got a bug, perhaps it's calculating
the interest for a given amount of money
and there's a bug in it under some scenarios.
You'll be unit testing it, perhaps,
and maybe adjusting or proposing a change to it.
And all the changes that you'll probably be making
to any code base, at this point in time,
will be checked by someone else.
Typically, a senior developer or someone else in the team
will be checking your work,
just to make sure that you're on par.
So that can be a bit intimidating,
working with other people.
But realise, that's just really part and parcel
of being a developer,
is sort of being shown the ropes
and gradually proving your worth over time.
So use that time really productively
and just learn as much as you can.
Read a lot of the source code.
Read the comments.
And depending on the size of the team,
often, there is supporting documentation
and probably thousands and thousands of pages
of documentation for the last systems.
It can be a really useful exercise,
to go through and look at all of the design documents
to see what decisions are made for a particular code base,
but then obviously, reading the code itself
can be extremely useful.
So those are typically the types of things you'll work on
and then gradually, you'll move up and up the ranks
and be able to, you'll get commute access
to the respository,
meaning that you'll be sort of, trusted enough
to make changes
without having to go through someone else
and you can understand, from a company's perspective,
they don't know your skills truly until you start,
so things will be fairly conservative
but then gradually, as you improve your worth,
you'll move up and up the ranks, so to speak.
And a funny thing that I actually saw on Reddit actually,
was the definition between a junior developer
and a senior developer.
A junior developer knows to look at Stack Overflow.
Great website for learning and finding answers.
But a senior developer not only knows how to look,
they actually know how to apply the changes as well.
That's the sort of thing that
you'll actually learn over time
and you'll find that you'll be picking up these things,
you'll be researching and trying to find solutions
and Stack Overflow will come up
in your Google search results all the time.
It's a great site to find solutions.
But as you get more and more skilled,
you'll be able to start applying and understanding
these Stack Overflow skills, it won't be a copy and paste,
which I would never suggest you do that anyway.
But you'll get to that level anyways.
So, stick at it and realise that
you've gotta start from somewhere.
All programmers were junior programmers
or started a job for the first time
or learned to programme for the first time.
You're doing the same thing as everyone else,
so keep at it and I'm sure you'll succeed
in the longer term.
All righty, so I hope that helped.
If you've got any questions, feel free to leave a comment
and I'll get back to you.
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click on up here and you can check that out.
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