8 Practical Techniques for Programmers to Learn on the Weekend

Whether you are a novice programmer who is just starting to develop software projects, or an experienced software engineer who is looking to expand his skills, there are many new technologies waiting for you to learn. Of course, it would be even better if you can learn the following practical technologies on the weekend. Learning these 8 technologies may give you more weekend rest in the future.

Proficient in version control

If you have never used version control, you may be in a difficult situation: you cannot restore your code to the previous version. Maybe you can only back up your code in the form of file naming, such as index_17.html. This is a painful thing.

Version control means you can restore your code to any version - even accurate to the hour or minute. If you have used Google Drive, you may be familiar with the function of restoring to the previous version. Yes, this is the simple principle of version control.

Flexible use of text editor

Programmers spend a lot of time on various text editors every day. You should choose a text editor that can improve your work efficiency based on your own habits and the needs of the development environment, and continue to learn how to use it in depth.

If you prefer to work in the terminal, then VIM and Emacs are recommended here; if you like to use a local text editor, you can try Sublime Text; if you like to work in a Mac environment, you can also try TextMate.

It’s not enough to just work in a text editor – you should try installing some plugins and extensions to make your work more comfortable.

Powerful SQL

An application software must use files or databases to store user data. Because database queries are fast and provide better query results, our applications prefer databases.

SQL is a database query language, but just learning basic SQL is far from enough for us to build large and complex application systems. Many times we need to perform joint queries on multiple tables or even multiple databases.

Therefore, I suggest that programmers can strengthen their SQL practice on weekends.

The Mystery of NoSQL

NoSQL, or Not Only SQL, has a data storage format that is different from traditional relational databases. NoSQL databases focus more on database availability and horizontal scalability. They also have a database query language similar to SQL.

There are several different types of NoSQL depending on how the data is organized. Although large companies like Quora don't use NoSQL, if you have very large amounts of data to process, NoSQL is a great choice.

Fall in love with the terminal

For some specific tasks, using the terminal is more convenient than using a visual interface. For example, you need to find and replace the corresponding string among thousands of strings - imagine that this needs to be done in a few seconds.

If you are working on a remote server, you need to be good at using the terminal. Although you can use the visual interface to operate on the remote server, it is faster to use the terminal. There is also a more important reason - using the terminal will save bandwidth because only some text information needs to be transmitted.

For terminal beginners, you can start learning by simply copying text when you have free time on weekends. After a while, you will find that you will fall in love with the terminal.

Controlling remote servers

As a programmer, you will definitely not limit your code to the local computer. If you develop an application, you will definitely show it to people all over the world. In this case, you need to log in to the remote server and set up relevant information so that your application can run correctly on the server.

Learn unit testing

Another important skill is unit testing. When you are developing a large project, it is impossible to test the correctness of the application after writing all the code. We should divide the code into several parts and then perform unit testing on each part.

The specific unit testing methods vary according to different programming languages, but the core concept is the same - write part of the code and test part of the code.

Learn to use Markdown

I put Markdown at the end because it doesn't have much to do with writing code, but it is very important for those who are used to publishing information on the Internet, such as writing a README file and adding it to a Github project.

Markdown is a tool that converts text into HTML. It has its own syntax and tags. These syntax tags are converted into standard HTML structure, which has certain practical value for some Web developers.

Dear programmers, are you ready for this weekend?

Translation link: http://www.codeceo.com/article/8-tech-programmer-learn-weekend.html

Original English text: 8 Essential Skills Developers Can Learn in a Weekend

Translated by: Xiaofeng