This presentation is about best practices, techniques, and attitudes of a professional software developer.

1. 12 Things Every Programmer
Should Know
by Samnang Chhun
Barcamppp 2010

2. About Me
• samnang.chhun@gmail.com
• @samnangchhun
• http://wowkhmer.com
• Ruby and Rails Developer
• .NET Developer (MCTS)
• Yoolk Inc.
• Share Vision Team Core Member

3. 1 Be Passionate
• Love what you are doing
• Be creative
• Want to do it best
• Better than yesterday
“Programmers are a subset of creators have the
responsibility to shape the new world”,
@steveklabnik and @judofyr

4. 2
Love Your Codes
• Write codes for human, but bad
programmers write codes for machine
• Every programmer loves to work with
Clean Code

5. 3 Version Control
• Backup your codes
• Tracking changes (who, what, when)
• Work in parallel
• Commit often
• Never commit when your build fail

6. 4 Read Codes
• Before you become a good writer,
you have to be a good reader
• Day and day programmers working
hours: 70% reading and 30% writing
• Take notes on ideas or tricks of the
author

7. 5 Practice, Practice,
Practice
• Small exercises, isolated problems
• Practice on outside company projects
• Do your best as you can(no pressure)
• Practice to become a master
• CodeKata, Pair with Me, Fixing bugs in
an OSS that you are using

8. 6 Refactoring
• Improve quality of your codes, without
changing system behavior
• Make it easy to understand, maintain,
and extend
• “Always check a module in cleaner than
when you checked it out”, Uncle Bob
• Intension-Revealing Names, Small
Method, Compose Method, …

9. 7
Follow Patterns
and Best Practices
• Object Oriented Design Principles
• SOLID
• GRASP
• DRY
• KISS
• Don’t Tell Us
• Design Patterns

10. 8 TDD/BDD
• Tests are specifications what the system
does
• Tests are your first user
• Short development iteration
• Is a design process
• Write just enough codes to pass the
tests

11. 9 Automation
• Make your manual tasks are
automatable
• Command line are your friend
• Make a shortcut of your repeated tasks
• Continuous Integration
• Automation Deployment

12. Understand
10 Your Domain
• Domain-specific won’t be outdate soon,
but technologies will
• “You can’t creatively help a business
until you know how it works.” Chad
Fowler

13. Continuous
11 Learning
• You need to keep learning to stay
marketable
• “Be the worst,” Chad Fowler
• Read books, blogs, Twitters feeds, and
websites
• Listen to podcasts
• Sharpening your tools

14. Participate in
12 Communities
• A good way to learn something is to
teach or speak about it
• Join or start a study group or a local
user group for a language, technology,
or discipline you are interested in.
• Contribute to OSS

15. +1
What I have
leanred
• Be Prepared To Unlearn
• Validate assumptions about your skillset
• Do less reading about what others are
doing, and more doing of things that
others may want to read about
• Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal

16. References

17. Q&A