To remain employable at the age of 50, you should start working on skill set as early as possible. Also, keep up your health, spirit and your energy. If you are a programmer or developer whose age is 50 or over 50 and you like to live a technocrat life, there are certain things you can do to make it possible.
At the age of 50, you should be ready to learn new skills. If you want to work as a software developer in corporate IT industry, you should have a passion for a programming language. Writing code is the difficult part of the software development life cycle. If you have not organised everything from the start of the project, coding process becomes the most time consuming process. Having an experience of working as a freelance web developer can help, or you can also consider it as your career at 50.
Following are the tips that will help you to write better code at the age of 50 and help you to become more efficient.
- Start Study of Basics
Before you become a good programmer or you want to work as a programmer, you have to know the basic concepts. Unless you have the strong knowledge of the concepts, you can never be a good programmer. The fundamental concept understanding helps you in designing and coding the best solution in a best probable way. If you feel a gap in programming language and knowledge of detailed concepts, it is never too late to go back and get the basics revised. Start working on smaller projects first and then move to big projects.
- Practicing Algorithm and Data Structure
For becoming a good programmer, first study the data structures. Most of the good programmers have very good understanding of data structures and algorithms. The data structure is the key to any program and best knowledge of algorithm and data structure help you to solve any programming problem. Also, understanding algorithm like search and sort help you to improve your programming skills.
- Use Tags and Comments with every set of code
To become a good programmer, you should create a pure separating line between programmer and other information. Write meaningful parameter and functionality descriptions for function and method in words.
- Learn more by helping others
Learn by supporting others and also understand the problems solved by someone else. While you understand and solve the problems of others, you will learn much more. Also, you can study other programs. Reading referring reliable and know open source code or your senior’s code can help you to improve your programming.
- Write Understandable Logical Code & Avoid Complexity
Write simple and understandable logical code because simple and logical code always works fine and results in fewer issue. Always try to avoid unnecessary loops because variable and loops can prove problematic when your application grow to a large number of lines of code. Think twice before you pollute the namespace with variable, function, loop, etc. For spanning several classes, you should automatically generate API documentation. If you are working on several projects at the same time, you will find such documentation a blessing since you may forget about structure switching back and forth between projects.
- Structure your Application meaningfully
Don’t use a complicated structure and always try using simple structures in your application. While naming directory and files, always use a naming convention and use associated coding standard. It also a good idea to keep your directory hierarchy as simple as possible, so it is easier to navigate and easy to find a code what you want. Good code should be meaningful regarding variable names function method names and class names.
- Expend more time to Analyse and less time to Resolve
Expend more time in understanding and analysing the problem and find a solution for it. Designing is not only to modelling language and tools but finding a solution for it. If you are new to programming, select a simple, functional programming language for your coding.
- Review and Analyse your Code First
It is very difficult but try to breakdown your code and always try to write an error free code. Also, take others opinion on your code. Taking feedback of good programmer and working with them confidently help you not only improve Knowledge but also helps you in becoming the best programmer. Learn to build your application with a single command as it is the best way to prevent errors.
- Use Testing Tools
There are a lot of testing tools available in the market. But the best are the automated testing process. Testing is necessary to every software application. Unit testing is the thinking and coding process. Unit testing helps to find better names, better interface and it also improves your coding quality. Like coding and designing unit testing also a difficult job for many programmers. Some developer uses trivial tests, meaning they write scenarios. Unit testing thinks through scenarios and gaps in your code. Unit testing increases your thinking power.
- Work Around but don’t work Longer time
Lack of time and not understanding the exact problems are critical to programming. Less technology experience may result in finding the work-around solutions. It can result in corrupting your code later and will need more maintenance. Always try to implement a proper solution for any problem in a simple way by discussing with your colleagues and seniors. There is hardly any need to invent the wheel, and unless you are working on some unique project, most of the functions and modules may be available. You can always get help from your colleagues, your company’s code library as well as open source code libraries on the internet.
Summary:
You have seen the 10 tips to work as a programmer around 50 and writing better code doesn’t always mean you should be writing for 25 years. There are many companies who post freelance jobs on the various job posting sites, and any experience of working on such small projects can help you. Using various coding standards, online and offline help and ready to use code can help you a lot. Basic concepts should be very clear through a course or online study or a prior coding experience.