The Construx Professional Development Ladder is a comprehensive and clear road map for software career development. It mixes community standards, respected literature, and experiential learning to create a framework for understanding and acquiring software competency. I would recommend this short reading to every young developer. Let’s look at what makes it so good.
It’s easy to see how Domain Driven Design (DDD) by Eric Evans was such a seminal work. It presents a holistic development process that seems to have predicted the next two decades of development trends. Here are some of my key takeaways from the book.
Measurement – The types and amount of insights we extract on our students current understanding
I see programming as an extended application of problem solving, and problem solving is just a different view on self-learning. Encouraging self-learning makes a team skillful and robust.
I once worked at a startup where the developers were regularly ignored. Try as we might to bring in new perspectives and experts, everything was dismissed. It eventually fell apart with the entire team leaving. This is an example of climate, and a highly toxic one.
I come from the world of startups. Companies with interesting products fail every day. Despite novel products, customers are disinterested and avoidant. In software, unit tests are widely acknowledged to be good practice. However, few developers write them. These two cases are prime examples of motivation failures.
Repeatedly explaining some idea without perceived progress is frustrating for both the teacher and student. Ideas feel compelling and actionable, but remember, knowledge is both declarative and procedural. Thus, feedback and practice are two halves of one process. Feedback is not effective without an opportunity to practice.
Think back to the first post on mastery. Expert blindspot is caused by information obvious to the master and imperceptible to the student, causing both sides to be baffled by the behavior of the other. This can be an issue with knowledge organization.
Every student views new information through the lens of prior knowledge. In fact, some researchers suggest that learning requires connecting new information to what we already know. Either way, more connections leads to improved recall and utility.
Defn: Mastery - a high degree of competence in a particular area.