This post is a summary of a talk I attended a while back.
How to Approach Development: Balancing Depth and Breadth#
Every developer wants to write better code, solve problems more efficiently, and explore more creative technologies. But how can you grow into a better developer?
The philosopher Kant once said, "We should not learn philosophy, but learn to philosophize." Borrowing his words, it's important to think about "doing development" rather than just "development," and to cultivate both depth and breadth.
Depth of Development#
The depth of development is the process of understanding the structure and principles of technology, and learning how the tools you use actually work.
Knowing exactly why your code runs is a crucial step beyond simple feature implementation.
Why Should You Build Depth?#
- You can implement features faster
- You can write code with fewer bugs
- Debugging becomes more efficient
- It's just more fun this way
How to Build Depth#
- Find out why something works or doesn't work: Don't stop at checking whether something works -- dig into the why
- Reduce black boxes: Dive into how the commands and functions you use in Spring, Django, React, etc. actually work under the hood
- Question the obvious: Even with familiar code, try guessing the intent and imagining edge cases
For example, if you don't know how Spring annotations or React functions work internally, they're black boxes to you. Understanding these is how you build real depth.
Breadth of Development#
The breadth of development means having interest in various technologies and understanding other technologies related to your work.
Keeping up with trends in domestic and international developer communities and trying new technologies are great ways to broaden your scope.
Why Should You Build Breadth?#
- You can learn new technologies faster
- You develop a better eye for good design
- You might discover things you're even better at
- This can be fun too
How to Broaden Your Scope#
- Try using GraphQL in your next toy project
- Build a program unrelated to the web (e.g., a mail client)
- Rebuild a blog made with Django using Spring MVC
- Reimplement a form built with React-hook-form using Recoil
Recommended Activities and Books#
These books are great for broadening your perspective:
- Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month
- Chet Haase, Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System
- Felienne Hermans, The Programmer's Brain
- Alan Turing, On Intelligence
- Park Jeong-il, Turing & Godel: The Great Power of Abstract Thinking
Respect for People and Technology#
Always remember that there are people behind every technology. Every technical choice involves trade-offs, and even if a technology looks terrible, there's likely something it gained in return.
Before criticizing, think about better approaches and respect diversity.
I Love My Job#
A developer isn't simply someone who writes code.
True joy comes from cultivating depth and breadth in a balanced way through philosophical thinking and practical approaches.
Try practicing "doing development" in your own way!
Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.
— Oscar Wilde
