Issue #16 - Crafting Your Expertise Independently
The greatest weakness of all is the great fear of appearing weak ― Jacques Benigne Bossuel
As the year comes to an end and we look forward to the new year, our goal remains the same: to improve ourselves constantly. One of the best way to accelerate this improvement is through mentors. I want to share a small advice from one of my favorite book The Passionate Programmer about how to self-mentor when you don’t have one.
Finding a mentor can sometimes be challenging, especially when you have reached a ceiling in your current role, or your ideal mentor doesn't live in the same place as you. The author Chad Fowler wrote an interesting idea for self-mentoring in his book The Passionate Programmer-
Consider someone in your professional field whom you look up to – an individual whose accomplishments or abilities you hold in high regard.
List the top ten qualities that make them your role model. These could be skills or personal traits like communication or technical expertise.
Give each quality a rank from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most important to you. Then, score yourself on each of these qualities from 1 to 10, imagining yourself in the third person. Subtract your score from the rank for each quality. This will give you a priority score.
Sort the qualities based on these scores to see the areas where you need the most improvement.
Work on the top two or three qualities with the highest priority scores. Start with practical steps that you can take right away.
Links from around the web
React Jam, an online event where developers build a game within 10 days using React, is hosting its winter event. A perfect opportunity for both seasoned and beginner developers to hone their React skills. Only 8 days left!
Challenging projects every programmer should try - Austin Z. Hanley compiled a list of challenging projects that developers can build to push themselves out of their comfort zone. The projects include building a text editor, spreadsheet. a video game console emulator and others. Originally written in 2019, the article resurfaced on Reddit recently.
CSS Wrapped: 2023! - List of new CSS features that became available in most modern browsers. I had been waiting for the :
has()selector to be available on Firefox and finally it has support for all major browsers.
That’s all folks. Thanks for reading.