Jonathan Hop

The biggest hurdle to "leveling up" so to speak as a developer actually has little to do with how many design patterns you know, or how many languages you are proficient in. It's how to properly understand the end-user's requirements and how to best deal with a world where those requirements shift constantly. As I've gained experience, I've learned that one of the most effective skills is being able to work alongside end users to hammer out clear requirements, understand their core needs, and to deliver in a timely and dependable manner all while maintaining boundaries so that you stay sane as a developer.

The top tier design patterns are Singleton, Factory, MVC, Strategy, and Observer. The point of studying design patterns is understanding how to build an application that future you or your co-workers will have an easier time working with. You'll begin to appreciate just how powerful a well structured app is in terms of productivity, ease of development, and flexibility with respect to changing requirements from the end users.

Typically most people learn OOP and apply it in their careers. The functional paradigm is not as popular unless you're using a language or framework that specifically utilizes it, like React. However, trying to solve a problem using functional program does stretch your mental muscles because it will force you to look at the problem from a completely different angle. This gives you new patterns and new tools to solve a problem, even if later you still return to your OOP paradigm.

Object Oriented Programming has been around for quite some time, so there are plenty of resources. If you are looking to become more advanced, then focus on design patterns. Design patterns make you see how the objects interact with each other, and how applying constraints or arranging them a certain way can solve a problem. Certain design patterns are so useful they're basically built in to frameworks!

Algorithms and data structures tend to be things that you prep for your interview and then promptly do not use again. The thing is, when you become senior or you are responsible for being the architect of a solution, they return with a vengeance. The best thing to do is not spend time memorizing them, but to understand that at their core, they help you reason about memory usage, space usage, and time usage for a given problem, and how to balance between the three. The trick is to take the real world situation, break it down into numbers, and "see" the data structures emerge from the problem you are trying to solve. From there, you can leverage the fact that the data structure has many things worked out for you, and go from there.

Networking is the number one contributing factor to getting a job nowadays. A beautiful portfolio and great scores mean little if you can't get your foot through the door. Bootcamps usually allow you to connect with companies and speak face to face, forging the personal connections you need.