Advice I wish someone had given me when I was 17 (for future devs)

Originally by @EricaTheDev. Pull requests accepted!

Things to do

The basics

• Learn a new programming language which is different from the ones you know already: Javascript, Go etc see https://octoverse.github.com for a list of top languages
• Contribute to an open source project
• Have a pet project of your own. Bonus points: open source that
• In the summers when you're at University: work as an intern at a software development company
• Grow as a person, not just as someone who codes: be humble, don't be afraid to ask a lot of questions, learn presentation skills and how to logically discuss ideas

Things to read

Free articles and resources:

• https://github.com/mr-mig/every-programmer-should-know
• https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/blob/master/free-programming-books.md
• https://dev.to/

Things to watch

Talks from conferences such as:

• Devoxx https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCBVCTuk6uJrN3iFV_3vurg
• GOTO https://www.youtube.com/user/GotoConferences
• JAX London https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjV872QnKWg7a48CGApj46A
• LeadDev https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmM3eCpmWKLJj2PDW_jdGkg

Things to be

• Software Engineer / Software Developer / Programmer ** - Frontend, Backend or Full Stack
• DevOps
• Techops
• Testing Engineer / Quality Assurance / Quality Assistance / Test Automation Engineer **
• CICD Engineer
• Data Enginer / Business Intelligence **
• Security Engineer
• Product Owner / Systems Analyst

** used semi-interchangeably