Five Habits That Make Developers Look Inexperienced and How to Grow Past Them
- Jayant Upadhyaya
- 9 hours ago
- 5 min read
There is a recurring tension in software teams between traditional computer science graduates and developers who entered the field through self-directed paths. That tension is often loud online, occasionally hostile, and mostly unproductive. What actually matters inside a team is not where someone learned to code, but how they work once they are there.
Non-traditional developers are not judged by their résumés in day-to-day work. They are judged by patterns. Certain habits signal inexperience immediately, regardless of background. The good news is that these habits are behavioral, not innate. They can be unlearned.
Below are five common signs that mark a developer as inexperienced, along with practical ways to grow past them and become a stronger, more reliable teammate.
1. Treating “It Works” as the Finish Line
The most common early-stage mindset is simple: make the code work and move on.
This is understandable. When you are learning, just getting something to run feels like an accomplishment. But professional software development does not stop at correctness. Code lives far longer than the moment it first executes successfully.
Growth begins before the first line of code is written.
When you are assigned a task, resist the urge to immediately open an editor. Start by writing things down. Clarify what you are actually building. Identify the requirements, the constraints, and the unknowns. This often exposes missing information early, when it is cheap to fix.
Next, consider the existing codebase. What patterns already exist? What utilities, constants, or abstractions can you reuse? Reinventing logic that already exists is a strong signal of inexperience.
Finally, think beyond today:
Will someone else understand this code in six months?
Is it easy to modify?
Does it scale with more data, more users, or more features?
Professional development is about balancing correctness with readability, maintainability, and future change. Making it work is the starting point, not the goal.
2. Making Huge, Unfocused Changes All at Once
Large pull requests are another immediate signal.
When a single pull request contains multiple unrelated changes, reviewers cannot reason about it effectively. Bugs hide easily. Feedback becomes vague or superficial. Mistakes slip through.
Inexperienced developers often do this because they work in large bursts and delay committing until everything feels “done.” This makes problems harder to isolate and increases the risk of regressions.
A better approach is to think in units of work.
Plan the feature first. Break it into logical steps. Each step should represent a meaningful, testable change. After completing one step:
run the build
run tests
commit the change
This does not mean pushing half-finished code. A commit should always leave the system in a working state. But commits should be small and cohesive.
For example, building a login system might involve:
adding a user model
creating a form
validating input
wiring authentication logic
Each of these can be a separate commit. The pull request then tells a clear story, and reviewers can follow your reasoning step by step.
Frequent commits reduce risk, improve feedback quality, and make debugging dramatically easier.
3. Chasing Languages and Frameworks Instead of Concepts
Many developers fall into a cycle of constant novelty. A new framework becomes popular. A new language trends on social media. The temptation is to jump immediately, believing that breadth equals growth.
This is mostly an illusion.
Most programming languages differ primarily in syntax, not in fundamental ideas. Loops, conditionals, data structures, and control flow exist everywhere. Mastery comes from understanding these concepts deeply, not from collecting surface-level familiarity.
A developer who understands programming fundamentals can move between languages quickly. A developer who only understands syntax struggles every time the syntax changes.
If you want to intentionally learn something new, choose tools that force you to think more deeply. Lower-level languages like C, Rust, or Go expose memory, concurrency, and performance trade-offs more explicitly. That knowledge transfers everywhere.
When learning a new framework for work, aim to understand:
what problem it solves
how it structures data and flow
what trade-offs it makes
Do not memorize APIs first. Learn the model. Syntax can always be looked up.
4. Working on Too Many Things at the Same Time
Early in a career, there is pressure to look productive. Many developers respond by saying yes to everything. They juggle multiple tasks, attend every discussion, and constantly switch context.
This usually backfires.
Context switching is expensive. When you are learning, it is even more costly because each task requires mental overhead just to re-establish understanding.
More experienced developers are selective. They focus on one thing at a time, understand it deeply, and deliver it well. They say no or “not yet” without guilt.
As a newer developer, it is better to be known as someone who reliably finishes work than someone who is always busy but rarely done.
Take one assignment. Clarify it fully. Deliver it as requested. Only then take on the next task.
Software development is slower than it looks from the outside. Quality work requires sustained attention. Trying to appear fast by multitasking usually produces the opposite result.
5. Avoiding Code Review and Criticism
Many developers secretly fear code reviews. Once they finally get something working, they want to move on. Feedback feels personal. Rewriting code feels exhausting.
This is a major growth blocker.
Code review is not about judgment. It is about transferring experience. Senior developers have already made the mistakes you are making now. Their feedback compresses years of learning into comments.
Avoiding review or resisting criticism signals insecurity, not competence.
Strong developers expect their code to be questioned. They welcome suggestions. They revise without defensiveness. Over time, the same feedback appears less often because patterns improve.
It is important to accept where you are. Writing junior-level code as a junior developer is not a failure. Refusing to improve it is.
Let others read your code. Let them critique it. Let that discomfort sharpen your instincts.
Growth Is Behavioral, Not Background-Dependent
None of these habits are exclusive to self-taught developers. They appear in computer science graduates as well. What separates experienced developers from inexperienced ones is not education, but how they approach work.
Professionalism in software development looks like this:
thinking before coding
making small, understandable changes
prioritizing fundamentals over hype
focusing deeply instead of broadly
learning publicly through feedback
If you correct these patterns, your background fades into irrelevance. Teams care about trust, clarity, and consistency far more than credentials.
In the long run, the industry does not reward impostors or gatekeepers. It rewards people who do the work well and help others do it better.
Comments