Programming Achievements: How to Level Up as a Developer

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Programming Achievements: How to Level Up as a Developer

1. Select a particular experience to pursue.
2. Pursue that experience to completion. (Achievement unlocked!)
3. Reflect on that experience. Really soak it in. Maybe a blog post would be in order?
4. Return to Step 1, this time selecting a new experience.

This gist is a fork of the gist from this blog post.

programming-achievements.md

Current in bold Completed in strikethrough

Learn a variety of programming languages

• Write a program in Python
• Write a program in C
• Write a program in Java (Android)
• Write a program in JavaScript (CoffeeScript, Node.js)
• Write a program in Objective-C
• Write a program in Erlang

Learn a variety of programming paradigms

• Write a program in assembly language
• Write an application in a functional language
• Write an application in an object-oriented language
• Write an application in a prototype-based language
• Write an application in a logic programming language
• Write an application using the Actor model
• Write an application in Forth

Experience the ins and outs of programming for different platforms:

• Write a nontrivial web app
• Write a nontrivial desktop app
• Write a nontrivial mobile app
• Write an embedded app
• Write a realtime system

Enhance your understanding of the building blocks that we use as developers:

• Write a networking client (e.g., HTTP, FTP)
• Write a device driver
• Write a B-tree database
• Wrap an existing library to provide a better (more pleasant) user experience
• Write an application or framework that provides a plugin model
• Write a testing framework
• Write a programming language

Enlighten yourself with koans, katas, and the wisdom of ages:

• Complete five code katas
• Complete the programming koans for a language that you want to learn
• Read SICP and complete all the exercises
• Read and understand TAOCP

Program in the open:

• Contribute to an open source project
• Have a patch accepted
• Earn commit rights on a significant open source project
• Publish an open source project
• Perform a Refactotum of on open source project

Learn by teaching others:

• Present a lightning talk
• Present at a local user group
• Present at a conference
• Deliver a training course
• Publish a tutorial
• Publish a constructive code review of an open source project
• Write a programming book

##Learn about algorithms:

• Determine the asymptotic running time of an algorithm
• Implement basic Sorting Algorithms: Bubblesort, Heapsort, Quicksort... Understand their tradeoffs.
• Implement basic Graph algorithms: Prim, Kruskal, Dijkstra, A*...
• Create and implement a dynamic programm
• Proof a problem NP Complete
• Understand the halting problem

##Learn tools:

• Try a different SCMs for a projects (Git/Mercurial...)
• Try a different IDEs for a projects
• Set up a project with a Build Tool (Make, Rake, SBT, Ant, Maven...)
• Set up a CI server