Open source is one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever encountered in our industry. It is a movement that essentially groups people together to work on a product because they want to. They usually do it for free, especially during the first stages of the project, and then — get this — they maintain it so that others can use it. Also for free.

I tend to think that if more industries were to adopt open source as we do in software development, things would be a lot easier. Then again, that’s not why we’re here. …

The dream of being your own boss is one that almost everyone goes through at some point during their career. For some strange reason, we tend to believe we can do away with concepts such as “boss,” “9 to 5,” or “team meetings” and just sit down, put our head down, and work on what we love. Like that would solve all our problems.

In some cases, this notion becomes more than just a dream; some people actually succeed at freelance. More often than not, it either remains a dream or quickly becomes a nightmare. …

Many new developers tend to add a veil of magic in front of frameworks such as React because of the way they see the data flow going, and how different it is from everything they ever learned while becoming a new developer.

And it’s true, it is like magic if you don’t know what’s going on, but like Arthur C. Clarke once said:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

So let’s take a closer look at the basic principle behind any reactive behavior you might find in the wild and why it’s (a) not magic, and (b) so…

Dealing with a common data model between the front-end and the back-end can be a pain if you’re not working on a monorepo. This is because ideally, you do not want duplicate code that can become out of synch by lack of maintenance.

If the data model changes on the back-end, you need to have a surefire way of making sure that the front-end (or rather, let’s call it client) code will notice the change. Otherwise the latter will suffer greatly either by receiving no-longer-compatible payloads, or it’s just ignoring the new additions. …

I’m a firm believer that if you’re a developer, you need to be aware of how things work outside of your comfort zone, even if you’re not planning to step outside of it anytime soon. The fact that you know there is a different way of doing something is by itself opening up your horizon to new methodologies and technologies.

Of course, you then have to try them, otherwise, you’re not really doing much, however, the jump required to go from “reading” to “trying it” is actually not that big, so consider giving, at least, one of the 4 programming…

In the NoSQL world, there are three characteristics you need to look for on any database. Not because you need to make sure that you have all three, but rather because you need to understand that you have at least two.

That’s right, the C.A.P theorem states that out of these three very sought-after properties of a NoSQL database, you can only have two, at most. And that’s why you need to know about it — because you need to know what you’ll be sacrificing when choosing between two very similar alternatives.

So let’s quickly cover the theorem, and then…

I’ve had conversations with many developers trying to understand how to get their first job without any experience. And my go-to solution is: create a Github account and start uploading code projects you’ve worked on. Either that, or create new ones and publish them there.

Sadly, not everyone has access to Github, given how the platform is part of Microsoft and given the latter is a US company, it needs to comply with the US export law. Thus developers from countries such as Iran, Syria, Crimea and others are blocked by the platform.

This puts a harsh roadblock in their…

No, it’s not naming things, although that’s a solid #6 on my list if you ask me.

However, no matter how much we like to think we are, software developers aren’t perfect. We like to think of ourselves as superheroes, but we have to remember one thing: they also have weaknesses.

In fact, given our predisposition to all things logical, we tend to have several problems when it comes to our “people skills” (at least some of us do!).

So let’s take a look at five weaknesses that we as developers tend to have. And since we’re at it, a…