What makes a good developer?

18 August 2016

On a day when UK A-Level exam results are released showing the number of students taking computing this year has increased by 56 percent since 2011, it's worth considering what kind of people it really takes to build great websites and web applications.

The truth is that if you ask 100 different developers, you'll get 100 different answers! But what we all have in common is a love of solving problems, wherever we can find them.

The kinds of challenges we look for vary tremendously - while some enjoy more abstract and mathematical problems, such as the complex encryption that underpins online security, others prefer crafting practical solutions to real business issues.

In order to meet the technical demands of modern IT it's important to have more than just qualifications. It's critical to actually enjoy using unknown tools to solve unknown problems.

This industry moves so fast that currently cutting-edge tools and techniques could become obsolete within just a couple of years.

So we're always finding time in our workflows to check on that cool browser feature that we didn't think was widely-enough supported 18 months ago, just in case it's suddenly become the industry standard! Web development is a constant chase to keep up, and to stop learning is to fall behind.

So our advice to every teenager who dreams of being a web developer, is to get out there and start building! Good luck!