Asked in a recent interview about what he thought kept bitcoin so strong for so long, Jimmy Song attributed this durability to bitcoin’s development community. He observed that the durability of a crypto token ecosystem is directly proportional to the quality of the development community backing that token (I’m paraphrasing here). He stated that bitcoin has always had a superior market capitalisation due to its relatively high quality of its developer community than other altcoins. After a bit of research into other cryptocurrencies, I fully share Jimmy’s sentiment.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, once said that before he brings anyone on board at Facebook he asks himself whether he would work for that individual if the tables were turned. I have had the honour to work with strong developers in my professional career. I have noticed some distinct attributes that set these developers apart from the rest. In this article, I want to explore one key attribute that set strong software developers apart from the rest and why it is critical for people intending to get into blockchain development to cultivate this skill.
A growth mindset
Mindsets can be taught; they’re adaptable. Researchers have known for some time that the brain is like a muscle — the more you use it, the more it grows. Strong developers tend to have a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. Neural connections form and deepen most when we make mistakes doing difficult tasks rather than repeatedly having success with easy ones. Our intelligence is not fixed, and the best way that we can expand our intelligence is to embrace tasks where we might struggle and fail.
People with growth mindsets correctly believe that capability and intelligence can develop through effort, struggle and failure. Developers with a growth mindset enjoy challenging themselves constantly and view failures as opportunities to learn, not mistakes to be ashamed of. Furthermore, these developers constantly work on developing a growth mindset. An important part of this mindset is to measure progress continuously against yourself, and not against others.
Traditional software development can be hard, and the distributed ledger protocol development ups the intensity simply because of the sheer number of different moving parts to consider. It’s unlikely that a new entrant to crypto development would have previously used their brain as intensely as they do when developing for the blockchain, and getting used to this kind of a mental workout is hard enough without the added pressure of comparing oneself to others. Everybody has their own way and pace of learning and retaining information, and often that pace flows throughout the class. Go at a pace that is right for you, and avoid comparing your progress to others.
Final thoughts.
Getting started with blockchain development is challenging despite the availability of well documented tooling online. It is for this reason that people starting out in this space need to cultivate a curious mindset that constantly seeks to grow and is prepared to fail constantly and learn continuously.
by Mandla Magagula
