* I read a lot of technical books. Designing Data-Intensive Applications was a favourite. I dove deeply into technical books on the language I was using at the

* I read a lot of technical books. Designing Data-Intensive Applications was a favourite. I dove deeply into technical books on the language I was using at the time - C/C++. That knowledge carried over to other languages I later learnt. * I read a lot of non-technical books. Don't underestimate how beneficial it is to expand your general knowledge. Be open to new ideas. Engage in discussions with people, but don't be arrogant. It can be tempting to think you know everything, especially when you read a lot. Books can teach you a lot about the human condition, helping you connect and collaborate better with others. Ultimately to be a good programmer you need to be able to work with others. * I was genuinely curious and played around with Linux a lot at home. I got pretty good at writing bash scripts. When shit hits the fan, being able to bang out a bash script to quickly fix some data issue can literally save the day. Also knowing where things live on Linux can be super helpful when debugging services, or just getting your dev environment set up. * My first graduate role was doing mostly C, as well as C++ on fairly barebones Linux devices. Knowing C, understanding memory allocation, concurrency (mutexes, semaphores), man I can't overestimate how useful that has been. Having this understanding means you're just way ahead when you need to learn another language. It all carries over. * Don't neglect the human/social aspect. Be the kind of developer people love having on their team. Be generous, be kind, be humble. A smile can go a long way in this world. You'll be paid back many times over.