vital skills for a developer

Gunderloy assumes you can already program well. But he shows how making a commercial product means you need extra skills. It is the assimilation of these skills that makes you into a developer, in his eyes.

Unit testing is one of these skills. Vital in verifying that crucial routines work. While this might not be feasible for all routines, you should aspire to do so as much as possible. Plus, it would be good if the unit tests could be run in an automated fashion. So that you can easily and often test.

Another necessary trait is to use a source code control system. So that you can roll back to an earlier known good version if necessary. More importantly, it enables a team of programmers to work on the same code base.

Having a streamlined build is also good. It is convenient to be able to type 'make' [or the equivalent] and have all your code compile.

Other Reviews

• Good for learning to develop better software
• Computer Science graduates please read
• Should be required reading for junior programmers
• vital skills for a developer
• A shallow list of development tools without much added value