Learning to Teach

TLDR: Teaching is the best way to find where your strengths in coding lie and where you can improve yourself

This month I started teaching a new coop student from Ottawa and its been quite the experience both seeing how quickly he has been learning but also where the strengths of my code base lie and how I can improve myself.

Coming from a mixed Bootcamp programming and academic computer science background, I didn't realize how little technical skills are taught in schools for software engineering. My Coop student came in with a good foundation of computer science fundamentals but little to no knowledge of concepts such as frontend frameworks, version control, or relational databases. Again these things can easily be taught but there is still a learning curve.

A learning curve that comes with a rapid period of professional growth. As we work through the codebase, I am able to quickly teach him best practices so that he can grow as a developer; a favor he returns by being an involved student.

It's only been a week and our interaction has allowed me to look at my codebase from a new perceptive and see how things can be improved. Working by yourself on a codebase has its advantages but when you grow into a team, cooperation and collaboration enable the codebase to thrive and grow to new levels.

I have learned the best way to grow as a software engineer is through such teamwork; alone you can only be as good as your last project. As a team you as accomplished as the collective.