By vetoing a proposed change, stETH holders initiate a dynamic time lock that leads to two potential outcomes. Firstly, it allows stETH holders to exit if the DAO proceeds with the proposed change. Alternatively, it offers sufficient time to reverse and undo the proposed changes if token holders determine that retaining users in the protocol is more important.

Another way to look at Dual Governance is that it implements 1) a dynamic user-extensible time lock on DAO decisions and 2) a rage-quit mechanism for stakers, accounting for the specifics of the Ethereum withdrawal process.

Why

The DAO’s overwhelming power over the protocol can lead to controversial changes to the social contract between users and LDO holders. That includes code changes, altering the list of Oracle committee members, stake distribution changes, and governance structure alterations.

Dual Governance will dramatically shift the balance of power toward users, putting them ahead of LDO token holders. It will do so without burdening users with additional governance duties and voting responsibilities. But instead giving users exit guarantees and allowing them to negotiate from a position of strength.

DG aims to protect users from the negative effects of the DAO’s one-sided governance, allowing the stETH holders to impact DAO decisions and indirectly defend their interests.

Putting Users First

The current governance of the Lido protocol leaves stETH holders underrepresented in this principal-agent relationship between users and DAO. With the protocol holding nearly eight times the value of the DAO, it makes LDO ownership an attractive way to sabotage stETH holders. In the worst-case scenario, attackers could seize majority control of the LDO token through ownership, borrowing, or bribing. This poses a huge threat to stETH holders.

To address this unbalanced relationship, there is a need for a system of “checks and balances,” resembling the governance principle where separate branches are authorized to prevent actions by others and encouraged to distribute power.

Disincentivizing majority stake ownership in LDO will thwart cartel activities and bring more uniformity to the poor LDO token distribution. Owning LDO to rug stETH holders will no longer be relevant because the targeted users will most likely just flee with their funds intact at the first sign of danger and long before the proposal takes effect.

Two-phased Veto

A two-phased veto allows for a small group of users to voice their disagreement with the DAO’s current course. They do so by sounding an alarm that pauses Lido governance and invites other frustrated users to join the veto, strengthening their collective intention to leave. This causes the dynamic time lock to extend as necessary and provide enough time for both parties to negotiate. Finally, two paths are possible: de-escalate and prevent protocol changes, or allow for more users to join the veto and eventually flee together.

Users will be able to impact DAO’s decisions by mere willingness and determination to rage quit. The rage quit mechanism is the last line of defense for stakers after all the negotiations have failed. In an attempt to retain users, the DAO might simply decide to withdraw the proposal, prioritizing users above the desired protocol changes. This gives users more say in the governance.

If, however, users fail to persuade the DAO to back off, they can resort to exiting the protocol. After they exit, the DAO resumes its governance and can execute the controversial proposal.

Foot Voting

Dual Governance will also safeguard the stakers’ ability to foot vote at times of mass exits. Foot voting stands out as one of the most efficient voting mechanisms because it requires no coordination among participants. However, it only works well in moderate misalignments between stETH holders and LDO holders, particularly during gradual user outflows.

In any other extreme cases, including governance attacks or removing the majority of operators, this mechanism proves useless: a huge outflow of stETH refugees will cause big line-ups in Ethereum’s throughput-limited withdrawal queue and users won’t be able to leave in the time allotted. Moreover, users who have locked their stETH elsewhere for higher yields face prolonged unwinding times. Under a single veto phase, these users would have been stuck!

All in all, Dual Governance will allow stakers to exit the protocol without being subject to new and pending DAO decisions, further improving foot-voting efficiency.

Dynamic Time Lock

DG will extend the current rigid execution time lock with a dynamic user-induced time lock that will provide sufficient time for stakers to exit. The time lock could be triggered by a minority of stakers and prolonged by the rest.

A quorum of users could sound an alarm and issue a veto which will trigger the dynamic time lock. The most active, yet honest minority will notice an attempt for a shady change in the governance and start increasing the time lock by joining the veto.

This mechanism, therefore, will give users the ability to negotiate and induce the DAO to withdraw its proposal. Otherwise, the users will resort to foot voting and exit the protocol.

FAQ

Why do we need to introduce such a complex mechanism when the DAO or users or a mixed mechanism can elect a committee that will veto malicious proposals?

This approach worsens the situation by creating another instance of the Principal-Agent problem. The role of the agent is now taken by this newly-introduced committee which might not act in the best interest of users. Therefore, delegating the task of watching and filtering the protocol changes to the committee might not be a good idea. Additionally, this mechanism is quite slow and inefficient.

Why can’t we have a simple time lock on all governance decisions so that users are guaranteed the opportunity to exit within the period of the time lock?

Well, either this time lock has to be extremely long to account for any withdrawal queue or there has to be an oracle that will keep an eye on the withdrawal queue length. Either way, this approach will reduce the efficiency of governance. Propagations of protocol changes will be delayed, specifically those that aim to fix a critical vulnerability. Lastly, a simple time lock won’t provide users with any negotiation power nor does it improve the principal-agent problem.

Why not involve stETH holders in the governance?

The drawback of this approach is that users will be burdened with governance duties. This goes against the users’ initial motivation to obtain stETH, which is mostly for the reason of collecting yield rather than the headache from the protocol governance. Additionally, allowing users to select node operators usually leads to centralizing the validator set.

Why it’s important to launch before EIP-7002

Although this explainer aims to call on all token holders to vote in favor of Dual Governance, it’s critical to emphasize the importance of launching before EIP 7002. Currently, LDO holders can’t force node operators to exit. Even in the event of a captured DAO, it’s hard to coerce Ethereum-aligned operators to act against their will. However, EIP 7002 will drastically shift the balance of power here by allowing LDO holders to force operators out of the protocol. This is why Dual Governance ideally needs to go live before or shortly after the EIP 7002. Users must be provided with exit guarantees to protect against a malicious withdrawal vault upgrade or undesirable changes to the node operator set.

With just 10 minutes of daily practice

Once the virtual function interacts with the reference object, verify the name property. Then register the callback before checking for the event status. Wait, what event? I didn’t even define it yet. What am I even talking about here, you might ask.

Think of a time when you had an epiphany followed by an amazing idea. You rushed to jot it down but ended up digressing. As a result, you failed to capture the great idea that popped up in your head a minute ago. You lost the gist of it because the thoughts kept barraging your brain and you couldn’t keep up. Has that ever happened to you?

As a former developer, I constantly battled with my own brain. My touch-typing skills were average, perhaps mediocre if I’m to be candid here. I just never took time to hone them and missed out on many great ideas as a result.

What Is Touch-Typing?

If you use all ten or however many fingers you have without peeking at the keyboard, then you touch-type. This nifty skill helps one jot down their thoughts and ideas quickly. I often wish I could type as fast as I think.

I like to type. Writing down my ideas and thinking “on paper” helps me make sense of my life. I do daily journaling and free-writing for this reason.

The Most Dangerous Writing App allows me to generate ideas and ignite my thought flow. Google it! Many ideas in this article come from it. Today I tried hardcore mode. It blurs the letter as I type and promises to destroy all my writing if I pause for more than five seconds.

So the very first tip is to type daily, even as little as one hundred words.

During a 30-minute writing session, I usually type between 1,200 and 1,500 words. My average typing speed is about 90 words per minute. But I digress.

Why Bother Honing Touch-Typing?

Touch-typing allows for more fluent thought expression in the digital medium. It conveys vague ideas by turning them into clearly written words. Whether it’s prose or code, your thoughts don’t linger for too long. If you fail to capture them on time, they are gone. Perhaps forever.

Inhibited by our communication abilities, we often lose many remarkable ideas. I used to sit down and scribble a plan of action, but often my creative mind gushed with ideas. I couldn’t keep up and failed to capture most of them due to slow typing skills.

I always envied those who touch-type words like a prominent composer strokes piano keys. Touch-typing is as important today as handwriting was in the Renaissance. A keyboard replaced quill and ink. And our ability to touch-type is now the certificate of literacy. We constantly communicate online, digitizing our thoughts with keystrokes, reading, editing, and responding to others.

It’s not only about the typing speed but also your ease and comfort with a keyboard. Typing 50 words a minute by effortlessly engaging all your fingers is way better than fidgeting at 100 words a minute while hitting backspace every other word. Discomfort and tension inhibit your thinking and slow down your writing. Derailed by the effort to find the right key, you can’t effortlessly capture your thoughts “on paper.”

In the past, typing used to feel like a chore to me. Now it feels like playing music as I type out words. Even this text feels great as it lays itself on the pale white screen. Effortless typing requires a smaller amount of mental RAM, leaving the majority for the task at hand.

Early in my career, I realized the crucial role of touch-typing but never bothered honing it. Don’t make the same mistake.

I urge you to hone your touch-typing. Start now, keeping in mind that consistency beats intensity.

The Problem of Tense Fingers

Tense fingers inhibit freedom of movement, throwing off the pace and interrupting the thought flow. Touch-typing requires nimble fingers with sensitive fingertips. They have to be your servants, ready to hit any key at the moment’s notice.

Tension bears most responsibility for slow touch-typing. The movements ought to have an unrestricted range of motion, fingertips floating gracefully above the keyboard without any supervision on your side. The conscious mind should not be involved in deciding which finger hits the next key.

Keep your wrists rested whenever you’re not typing. Otherwise, tension builds up quickly and interferes with your typing.

Peeking at the Keyboard

The problem of looking down at the keyboard lies at the core of bad typing habits. We are not supposed to take our eyes off the screen. For this reason, keyboards have two marks on them for keys F and J. Those are the home keys for your left and right index fingers. From there, you’re supposed to navigate around the rest of the keys by muscle memory.

The trick with touch-typing is to hit each key with the appropriate finger. For example, the left ring finger is only supposed to hit keys W, S, and X.

But this knowledge alone wouldn’t make you type faster. It takes deliberate practice and continuous effort. You need to drill it over and over again. Practice makes perfect.

How to Touch-Type Faster

Once you realize how to use your fingers, drill it! Forge that muscle memory. I started with typing.com. They offer a great user interface and a keyboard map. The map tells you which finger to use with each specific key. Follow it religiously.

The site tracks your progress, gives you instant feedback, and shows your speed along with your problem keys. I have spent dozens of hours practicing there.

You don’t have to, though. Dedicating as little as ten minutes a day can double your touch-typing within a year. Whatever your goals are, remember that consistency beats intensity.

Pick a schedule to fit ten minutes of daily practice. Commit and don’t check your progress every day. Do so once every other day or even once a week. With one hour a day of practice, I was able to take my typing speed to 100 words a minute in five months.

Once you learn the basics of touch-typing, add Keybr.com to your arsenal. The site requires no registration. You start practicing as soon as you navigate to it. It displays its ad in the top banner to support the developer, but I never found it distracting. The site saves your progress in a browser cookie, so when you return, you pick up where you left off.

The algorithm adjusts the difficulty based on your progress. The words are not real English words, but they adhere to English phonetic rules. For example, you might get the word reblumation, which sounds like an English word. But you will never see something like gdfskgjlsd or another long sequence of consonants in a row.

It’s a great way to squeeze in five-minute daily drills between little tasks you do on your computer.

If you’d like a full-blown typing tutorial, checkout Ratatype. These folks have developed a system that takes you on a thrilling typing journey and helps you hone your skills in the most entertaining way possible.

Now, where do you test your typing speed? The website I used the most is 10fastfingers.

The website tests your typing speed and accuracy by letting you type short- to medium-sized words and then counts based on the number of correct characters hit. Sean Wrona, a touch-typing champion, gives great advice on improving your typing speed.

Need for Speed

As you progress, you might start chasing speed. It’s tempting, but you need to hold yourself back from doing it. We all fall prey to that. Consistency and endurance will get you better results.

When it comes to speed, you have to control and vary it. Speed up for familiar and simple words. Slow down for unknown and intricate words. That’s important to avoid making mistakes. Most of the time you want to maintain a consistent pace.

Accuracy is more important than speed.

Accuracy

Whether you’re starting out or taking your typing skills to the next level, accuracy is critical. You need to drill it to the point where you want to smash your keyboard but stop just before you actually do.

The next day your fingers will move with more ease and you will feel more relaxed when typing. That will let you think freely and concentrate on other mental activities while setting your typing almost on autopilot. It will then become your servant and type anything you think of.

When I get frustrated, I remind myself of how people learn piano. They probably get even more wicked thoughts.

Look One Word Ahead

When drilling touch-typing and testing your speed, track each word closely. Also, look one word ahead. Your eyes need to move gradually from word to word, and your fingers must follow. With time, you will coordinate them better and embed this ability into muscle memory.

Tracking precisely with your eyes is as important as stroking keys with your fingertips.

Lastly

As computers evolved, so did the peripherals. Basic inputs in the form of knobs and switches in the ’60s got replaced with keyboards and mouses. Then voice control emerged. Now we have computers taking input from video signals.

We will always use language to communicate. Writing will be eternal. We learn to communicate with each other from an early age. If language is the foundation of literacy, then touch-typing is its main tool.

5 Tips to Take Your Touch Typing to 100+ Words per Minute was originally published in Better Programming on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I embarked on this journey with the intention to change my life by filling it with new experiences. But a quick revelation, a few weeks into the trip, baffled my beliefs.

I realized that apart from my cozy clothes, a couple of cameras, and a computer, I carry a burden of crippling thoughts and a history of painful events from the past. In the absence of familiar places and people, it quickly became apparent.

Changing the Perspective

In the summer of 2019, nine months after quitting my 9–5, I flew to Guadalajara, Mexico. From there I wandered south by land. A bus after bus I pondered in solitude and faced a few revelations. Three of those I want to share with you.

I traveled by myself. So solitude always accompanied me. Occasional English-speaking acquaintances allowed for cozy banter and rare emotional connections. But the lingering thoughts challenged me regardless of my geographical location.

The newness of a country, language, and culture can temporarily dim the light of undesired thoughts. But as soon as new emotions settle in, the same old thoughts surface to challenge their host again.

I couldn’t escape them. So with enough leisure I accepted the challenge.

You can change your name, your job, your residence. But if you don’t change your mind, the same experience will perpetuate itself over and over again.

The inner war seeped through my skin.

You know, those moments when you can’t help yourself but cringe at the sudden memory arisen from the depths of your soul. The moan mingled with sigh gushes out of you. You cover up your weird lurching with the melody of the only song you know while looking around to see if anyone noticed. Luckily very few people understood English.

When surrounded by the same old office walls, striding the same streets and blowing the same weekends, we fall in the rut. The repetitive events perpetuate. As a result, life becomes bleak and we begin to blame our jobs, people, and even our parents for the lack of excitement in our life.

When traveling though, everything changes. With nothing to blame, you turn to your tormenting thoughts and painful memories. And those elicit unwanted emotions. The negative reinforcement loop kicks in.

To steer my life away from the repetitive unwanted experiences I needed to change my attitude of mind. So I faced my forgotten feelings and revisited buried emotions. I meditated turning my heed inward.

I began to realize that the lingering thoughts inside my head determine the quality of my life. So I dove into the weeds of my own head. Ever since that epiphany, I carry more fulfilling existence on a daily basis preferring experiences over things. Speaking of which,

Prefer Experiences Over Materialistic Possessions

Two years before my journey, I began saving up money. Minimizing all my belongings and abstaining from unnecessary shopping, I realized that I need a lot less than I always thought. My minimalist life began.

I started measuring, using my own units, the amount of satisfaction I receive from a new experience as opposed to a new toy. The experiment led to downsizing and living out of a suitcase. Which turned out to be useful in the upcoming traveling.

Once on my journey, I followed the same approach. Physically limited by the amount of stuff I can carry, I was loath to buy ANYTHING. I would deliberate over which hat to buy or whether I really need a third pair of socks. But, I never hesitated to pay $30 to enter a tiny Maya site. That price didn’t even include a guide by the way.

The high paced journey saturated my life with memorable moments.

The idea of saving money to buy something substantial for retirement started sounding stupid. I doubted my previous beliefs about values. Nothing sounded worth possessing anymore.

When we keep acquiring more things, at some point we lose the ownership and they start owning us!

Prefer adventures and prefer them NOW.

Don’t Save Adventures for Retirement

Warren Buffet once shouted:

Following the career advice “It’s gonna look good on your resume” is like saving up sex for your old age!

A minor ailment struck me at the very beginning of my journey. Nothing too serious. Merely diarrhea and nausea. The tropical climate, heat, food, water, mosquitoes, what to blame? I didn’t care back then. I wanted it to end. And it did. Two days of recovery, however, seeded some doubts in my mind. I did not want to suffer like that anywhere on my journey.

But a more severe case emerged two weeks later. Heat. Vomiting. Fever. Diarrhea. The diseases seemed to follow me around. I don’t recall ever getting so sick in the United States. I felt defeated and wanted to quit.

During the recuperation period of five days, I lay flat in an air-conditioned room. Thank god it worked well. It gave me a lot of time to deliberate and ponder about my trip.

Getting sick revealed some great insights. It’s all about health! To get through the tortures of food poisoning during my adventures, I can only rely on my immune system. Staying in great shape will enhance my experience. Mighty lungs will propel me on a hike to the top of a volcano in Costa Rica. Healthy knees will make any walk a breeze.

Had I had poor health, who knows how severe those ailments could have been and how much toll would it take on my body? The younger we are the more chances we have to seamlessly fight off ailments without them inhibiting our journey.

Another reason to not put off traveling is ever rising responsibilities and expectations.

Think across the entire span of your life. Before you fledge, your parents take care of you. In your early adulthood, you might still depend on your parents. By the age of 25, you might have paid off your loans and became independent and self-sustained. By the age of 30, you might have some capital and a career.

Well now, the snowball of responsibilities and expectations is rolling faster than ever.

You keep postponing your dreams into the far future drawing temporary satisfaction from short vacations once or twice a year. But the idea of a big journey haunts you and you keep defying it.

Years pass by without your participation. Time to form a family of your own arrives. Your dreams retreat to retirement and you justify that with “preferring stability”.

That’s why travel now! While you can. Even on a budget with limited comfort. While your health allows. While you can endure the hardships of a journey. While your resilient immune system can put a fight with ailments. While you have what it takes to deprive yourself of sleep when your flight gets delayed. While you can afford to eat junk food in the absence of alternatives.

We all will yearn for our youth once it’s over. So at least let’s fill it with memorable experiences.

If a prickling feeling of missed opportunities keeps you awake at night, with years it will only amplify. They will haunt you with increasing intensity. Don’t let them. Act now.

3 Rare Revelations From My 3 Month-Long Backpacking Journey Through Central America was originally published in Change Your Mind Change Your Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

He kept yelling and cussing on the phone, blaming our app and every single team member including sales and accounting. I had no more patience and was about to explode, but let me backtrack a little bit.

I graduated with a Computer Science and Engineering degree in 2012. Back then software engineering was blooming. The demand for programmers was higher than ever and I thought I won’t have any trouble finding a job.

To my surprise, I spent nine months actively applying and reaching out to recruiters, but every interview began with the old dank question: “Do you have any real experience?”. How is a recent graduate supposed to have “real” experience?

I haven’t done internships — I know I should have though. Hands-on experience would have secured me a job much quicker.

Regardless of whether an internship would have eased my search, there are more effective ways to get your foot in the door of the dev world. Let’s look at them.

Alternatives

When I went to school in 2008–12, few sites like Udemy existed. I thought that every future developer ought to get a bachelor’s degree first. Little did I know how much effort it takes to find a job even with a degree in the most demanded field.

Clutching each consecutive job was a breeze though. I barely put any effort into the search. Most of the time recruiters reached out to me based on my acquired experience. My LinkedIn profile had hundreds of monthly views. Having six months of experience versus zero makes a tremendous difference.

After numerous interviews, I finally found my first job as a junior developer in freezing Wisconsin. Most of the skills I developed lay in the web development branch. Proficiency with HTML, JavaScript, CSS, ASP.NET and SQL formed the foundation for my web developing skills.

Yet, I attribute a chunk of my success to educating myself online using sites like w3schools. Back then they weren’t as sophisticated and only taught you basics. Today, online coding schools offer a wide gamut of practical knowledge.

Here are just a few of them:

• Code.org
• Code Academy
• Khan Academy
• Codewars
• Coursera
• Udemy
• Free Code Camp
• edX.org

A Better Route

Times are changing and traditional schooling can no longer keep up with the ever-rising demand in the tech field. Experience matters more than education and practical knowledge prevails over theory. A good portfolio reigns supreme next to a glossy diploma, showcasing your work and experience, rather than just a traditional proof of received education.

Online courses cost less than college tuition. But even if they cost the same, you will still end up paying less because they don’t have to add up to 128 credits to earn a certificate of completion. You will also learn a lot more by doing than sitting in a classroom.

Visit Code Academy. Try Free Code Camp. Check out Khan Academy. Take Udemy classes and get certified online. Start scribbling code and forging your portfolio. The vast amount of resources online, some of which are free, will hurl you to the programming horizons of the dev world.

With less time and effort, you will build a portfolio that will launch your dev career more effectively than a diploma from a four-year school.

Costs

We have determined that tuition costs more. But let’s review the additional costs and hidden fees.

Mere living and existing expenses add up in a period of four years! You need to pay for dorms or dwell elsewhere. Add food, parking permits and million hidden fees pertaining to your tuition:

• Student health center fees
• Student health insurance
• Athletic center fees
• Student activity fees
• Orientation fee
• Graduation/Commencement fees
• Academic transcript fees
• Technology fee
• Costs of required textbooks
• Library fees

Resist the temptation for validation in a form of black hand-written letters on a white canvas framed in a blue sleek cover labeled “DIPLOMA”. I am conceding that it is what lured me initially and what I chased throughout college. I thought once I graduate, the diploma will be my security and proof of my abilities.

A four-year school can cost you a fortune — $40,000 on average assuming you’re in-state. That’s a base value without considering all the hidden fees and extra expenses. Engineering credits can cost extra. For example at the University of Nevada, they charged us $40 more per engineering credit.

Another caveat of going to school for Computer Science is redundancy. Included in the curriculum are irrelevant classes such as diversity and core humanities. Think back to the high school where you had to listen to Mr. Smith’s rambling during history classes. Well, it’s the same thing, except now you’re paying for it.

At my university, core humanities made up 9 credits of the computer science curriculum. With an average price per credit of $150, the total exceeds a thousand dollars.

Physics with its scrutinized labs, 3D calculus, and electrical engineering drain your wallet and suck the spirit out of your soul. Additionally, I never found a use for them in the software development field.

If I had to estimate, 80% of what I was forced to take in school turned out useless in my career. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to learn. But paying ridiculous money for something I don’t need sounds like a waste of my life.

Even though loans don’t seem to bother us while we’re in school, they pile up quickly. And once we enter the workforce the game changes. We begin to feel the toll of the debt generated by tuition and incessant interests. Repaying them takes a few years during which you are not saving any money. I only repaid them after four years working in the industry.

Focus your efforts on online coding schools rather than dispersing them over a wide gamut of irrelevant classes while severely indebting yourself!

So Who Was That Furious Man?

It was the spring of 2017. I worked at a small startup in Chicago. I was an established dev with years of experience. At the time there were only three of us but we were backed by a Ready-mix giant. Although my title said “Solution Architect”, I did every kind of job except that. I had to manage servers, perform DevOps tasks, and look out for surges of reports that pummeled our database.

So the furious man was one of the ready-mix plant managers. We supplied them with telematics tracking software. And that day several of their trucks had the wrong geolocation shown on the map. The issue lay in the hardware which was outside of our influence. But I somehow had to calm him down so that we can keep their fleet of two hundred trucks.

It took ample patience on my side to get through that conversation, but my technical language somewhat induced him to calm down and realize that it wasn’t all my fault.

Just because you’re a Software Engineer doesn’t mean you will be doing exactly that. Quite often our misleading titles delude us to complacency and halt our progress. So regardless of your chosen path, keep growing and educating yourself outside the school.

Coding Interview Questions + Land Your Dev Job | Skilled.dev

Why You Don’t Need College to Be a Software Developer was originally published in Level Up Coding on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I was never a great developer. I was good but never exceptional. Although I studied computer science in college, surpassing the true “hackers”, who just seem to be born with a keyboard in their hands, always seemed impossible. But my short software engineering career taught me a handful of unique skills. Among those, I emphasized the five most important which I will share with you in this post.

Touch Typing

If you use all ten, or however many fingers you have and don’t peek at the keyboard while typing, then you touch type. Congratulations. Treat this section as informational content rather than instructional. For the rest, let’s begin.

Proficient touch typing not only dazzles spectators. It helps one jot down his thoughts and code ideas while the cognitive momentum lasts. Prevalent among developers, this skill gets handy when writing code. I often wish I could type as fast as I think.

It’s not only about the typing speed, but rather the ease and comfort with the keyboard. So typing 50 words a minute by effortlessly engaging all your fingers is way better than fidgeting at 100 words a minute while hitting backspace every other word. Discomfort and tension inhibit your thinking and slow down your coding progress. Derailed by the effort to find the right key, you can’t concentrate on the coding task at hand.

In the past, typing used to feel like a chore to me. Now it feels like playing music as I type out words. Even this text feels great as it lays itself on a pale white screen. Effortless typing requires less amount of “mental RAM”, leaving the majority to the task at hand.

Touch typing lets us convey our thoughts turning vague ideas into comprehensible code. Whether it’s a programming or natural language, your thoughts don’t linger for too long. If you fail to capture them on time, they are gone. Perhaps forever.

Inhibited by our communication abilities, we often lose many remarkable ideas! I used to sit down and sketch out a plan of action, but often my creative mind gushed with ideas. I couldn’t keep up and failed to capture most of them due to slow typing skills.

You can’t risk that! Throughout my professional career, I never paid enough heed to touch typing. But a few years ago I stumbled upon online tools that help typers hone their skills. I have been hooked ever since. In just five months I took my typing speed from 45 to almost 100 words a minute.

Only deliberate practice improves touch typing. I started with typing.com. They have animated UI and a variety of exercises as well as typing tests. The interface is encouraging and promotes a playful approach. Upon registering you get even more options, including suggestions and problem keys.

Later, I stumbled upon Keybr. It offers a simple interface, requires no registration and tracks your progress with a browser cookie. Its algorithm adjusts the difficulty based on your progress and problem keys. The words are not actual English words but adhere to English phonetics rules. So you won’t get words with ten consonants in a row.

I’ve tested my typing speed with 10fastfingers after toiling myself with touch-typing exercises. I love their typing speed tests.

The majority would argue that today it’s all about the copy-paste-edit approach. I disagree. Early in my career I realized the crucial role of touch typing, but I didn’t take action on it until later. Don’t make the same mistake. Start improving now, keeping in mind that consistency beats intensity!

Quick update. On June 2nd, 2020 I reached a typing speed of 100WPM at 100% accuracy. Very ironic, so I posted an update.

Learn GIT or Similar Source Control System

Source control systems help manage, organize, and track code. Sounds obvious. But, by mastering them, you will learn to keep your code neat, strive for order, and aim for clarity.

The majority of people within the developer community prefer GIT, making it the most popular version control system. It’s prevalent in the startup culture and not so much among bigger organizations. GIT can track changes in virtually anything. Its distributed model allows for great flexibility. But the workflow differs from the conventional client-server VCS like SVN or perforce. If you learn to work with GIT, picking up another source control will be a breeze.

When I first started, submitting my code for a review frightened me. Not only was I afraid of critique, but the process of submitting changes with GIT intimidated me. I was always afraid to break something. That’s why I am encouraging you to get comfortable with it before you have to deal with a handful of stress at work.

If you’re just starting out, I would suggest learning GIT before taking on a programming language. It’s like learning to use a wrench before trying to fix a car. GIT or similar VCS is indispensable. No software applications are created by a single developer. It’s all the mutual effort and we need tools to collaborate effectively.

I am grateful for this hefty tool and I urge you to learn it ASAP.

Terminal, Console, or Command Line

Historically, programmers scribbled in text editors within Linux terminal. Editors like VI, VIM, and Nano shone at the dawn of programming. In the days of text, GUI wasn’t widely available, so developers had to reserve to simple tools. But those editors had hidden power. And with that power came great responsibility which we often did not want. So we started making all kinds of IDEs and fancy editors.

I am not encouraging you to go back in time and perfect your VIM skills. I want to encourage you to learn basic terminal commands. Be it a power shell in Windows, Linux command line, or macOS terminal, pick one and start digging. For example, GIT is often used in text mode. GUI implementations miss a variety of commands available solely within the terminal.

Favorite Editor

Your development environment is your home where you spend the majority of your hours. Get cozy. You want something that promotes comfort and peace. Take time to arrange window panes, theme color, and font. Pick your favorite editor or IDE and start customizing. Learn about different options, extensions, and shortcuts. Look through plugins to see which ones you like.

Whatever your favorite editor or IDE is, make sure you master it. Adjust the workspace until you’re comfortable. Tweak the settings. Adjust autocomplete options. Set syntax rules. Customize the error output.

Look through the list of shortcuts and memorize the ones that will be of use. Learn one new thing about it every day and within months you will be a pro. This will boost your performance and improve your output as a result.

Language

Master your language. Familiarity with many programming languages is great. But deepen your knowledge for the language of your choice.

For example if it’s JAVA, learn its object-oriented model, inheritance, and polymorphism. Know the difference between value type and reference type objects. Spot and memorize the syntactic sugar. Memorize class definitions, function declarations, regular expressions, data types. Discover the data structure implementations.

If you deal with a compiled language, know the compilation stages. If it’s interpreted, learn about the interpreter.

It’s good to know many different languages. But the practical skill of one single language is a must. Be a master at something and not just a jack of all trades.

Thank you for reading. I hope you found it informative. If not, help me improve my writing, by commenting below.

5 Essential Programming Skills Every Developer Must Hone was originally published in Dev Genius on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I love asking people: how many days they think they will live? I urge them to spit out the first number that comes to mind. With no time to reckon, they shout out a ridiculous number — something along millions. Naive and ridiculous. The exact number baffles them.

The average life expectancy of 78.5 years translates to 28,653 days! The grins vanish. Guilt fills me. I don’t like to remind them of their mortality because I know how short our life appears when written in days.

Life ends. Perhaps there is another one, but I’ll speak within the scope of the current one.

So how many days will YOU live?

100. You’re ambitious. That’s great. Let’s speak numbers though. Multiply 100 years by 365 days in a year and you get 36,500 days. Seems less than I would like to.

But, it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality that matters, right? Out of those 36,500 days, you can boldly subtract a third — time allotted to sleep. Then subtract another third that you spend doing menial tasks at your 9–5 job. Then subtract 5% that you lose in the shallow meaningless conversations. Exclude another 3% spent in traffic. Deduct 2% wasted standing in long lines. What are you left with?

We get buried in routine. An average person dies at 75, although he stops living at 25. Meaningless lives filled with menial activities torment us to death. We don’t leave anytime to get to know ourselves. We long for purpose. Being happy is a cliche. We don’t always have to be happy, but we must have a purpose.

If we find meaning in what we do, life becomes more fulfilling. As a result happiness will appear in it more often. The positive thoughts must prevail over negatives. I am not sure about the ratio, but definitely bigger than one to one.

People spend their youth and a great chunk of their life working hard to earn and save for “retirement”. They sacrifice their health while earning wealth. Once retired, they spend those savings to restore the health lost making that money.

In the end, it defeats the whole purpose of saving for retirement. To me, it feels like an algebraic equation where all the variables cancel each other out. Except in real life that comes with a handful of misery, resentment, and regret. Why bother working hard and saving for retirement if that comes at the cost of your health? Preserve it now instead of restoring it later.

So why is life so short?

Once we assume we will live forever, we begin to procrastinate on everything. We start postponing our lives and our loves. We start saving sex for later days when we won’t be able to get it up or get moist.

Why is it important to know when you die? Well, let’s not be so dramatic. Death is just an event that creates newness of life. While I don’t want to know the time and place of my death, reminding myself of my mortality motivates me to live!

So if you have a bucket list, start on it now! Do those things that scare you and the ones your parents and friends won’t approve of. Be brave to bear with judgment and mockery. Act as if your time here is limited, because it is. Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind. You make choices every day, which in aggregate mold your life.

In her book “Top Five Regrets of the Dying”, Bronnie Ware summarizes the five biggest regrets people have at the dusk of their life. The main one is: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” We often want to fulfill our parents’ expectations. We seek approval from our friends. But after all, we live our lives, not theirs. And to live your own life, you need to do that which your intuition is calling for. You need to follow your curiosity and remember that the clock is ticking away. Those precious minutes of your life are running out fast. Don’t be trapped by dogma. Don’t live someone else’s life.

The clock

Look at your clock. The long tiny arrow, if your watch even has one, rushes forward without pausing. This is not time ticking away, it is your life ticking away!

If I had a choice, I would prefer a countdown instead of the current time. I know how long I have already lived. My every birthday reminds me along with hordes of people asking daily “How old are you?” But a clock that shows countdown will be like a kick in the butt to tackle those things on the bucket list.

The lifespan of an average person is lightning fast. We are deluded into thinking that we have time to do everything. But NO!!! We need to make choices! Which building to lean the latter against? If you ever feel like you’re climbing the wrong building, then stop. Get down and lean it against a different building to see if that’s where you want to get. Look at the people who climbed it. Do you want to be like them? If the answer is no, keep looking, don’t settle.

The most valuable values

The most valuable things in life come to us for free — our goals, our ambitions, our body and our mind. Materialistic things, often seen as difficult to attain, come to us at the cost of precious minutes of our life. When we buy something, we’re not paying with money. We’re paying with the hours of life we spent earning that money! Snippets of our life are traded for meaningless materialistic things.

The “dangerous” life

How often are we warned about the dangers of life? The fear of losing your “steady” job, lack of health insurance, not finding a good job, etc.

How dangerous is life? Well, you can’t make it out of life! And you will never see a U-Haul behind a hearse. You cannot take anything with you. Our dreams are the most valuable things we have. If you give up on your dreams, you might as well give up on your life! It’s better to spend a lifetime pursuing and failing to reach them than to achieve something you didn’t even want in the first place. Don’t settle for a mediocre and “steady” life with “job security” and a predictable future.

Take risks. Choose to be a minimalist to maximize the amount of time you can dedicate to yourself, rather than settle down for steady mediocrity.

Often we concentrate solely on goals. But we need to concentrate on the process. Be process-oriented. As Will Smith said: “Don’t think about building a wall, think about laying down the next brick as perfectly as you can.“

Reaching the goal rewards you with a few minutes of joy followed by a few days of satisfaction. But after that, you don’t start living “Happily Ever After”. Life continues and all the same laws of the universe apply. But the journey that you had while striding to this goal is actually what’s called life.