How to Practice Software Development

People practice lots of things: piano, tennis, poker, foreign languages, and many other things to improve in those skills and areas. Most software engineers want to get better at what they do, yet most probably don't deliberately practice software development. I'll talk about why it's hard to practice software development, share what I think the core of software development is, and talk about how I practice software development. One of my favorite ways to practice software development is with Advent of Code, so I'll talk about how I use it to practice.

Improving is providing pizza at 6:00 and the presentation will begin at 6:30.

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Speaker Bio

I currently work as a principal engineer at a large bank. In the past I have developed software for other financial institutions, a market research firm, an observability and monitoring company, and a telecommunications firm. I've worked mostly in the Java world, but I have also developed using Microsoft/.NET tools, and various scripting languages. I enjoy working on hard problems, especially ones that are risky and can deliver big value. Most of the projects I have worked on involve code that needs high performance, processes large amounts of data, and has high concurrency needs. When I'm not writing code for work or practicing software development I enjoy running, hiking, and reading (mostly philosophy, theology, and history).