Underrated Micro Skills You Didn't Know Was Helpful In Programming

The contents of this blog are purely based on personal opinions. Any similarities to existing contents are of pure coincidence. Any materials used for the blog belongs to their rightful owners.

When we think about programming skills, we often focus on technical expertise—learning new languages, mastering algorithms, or optimizing performance. But what about the small, often-overlooked skills that can significantly improve a developer’s efficiency, problem-solving, and overall workflow?

1. Keyboard/Macro Shortcuts

Keyboard is basically the bridge between the computer and your thoughts, if it falls short it can block and slow down your chain of thought, that is why you should actively improve your typing speed to accommodate and test your thoughts much more faster. The more you try things, the faster you get to your desired results.

2. Mental Debugging

Not everyone's brain is wired to think simultaneously, much less just mentally trace things just on top of their heads. Tho mental debugging oftentimes goes unnoticed, it's in all of us. Training this skill requires you to acknowledge it's existence and it's value, being able to understand the flow of the system and where things are coming from and popping out to, is something you would thank yourself for the rest of your programming life.

3. Efficient Googling

If I were to sum up the majority of my programming career, I'd say googling stuff I don't understand would be one of the top 3 things. At this point where anything you can possibly learn about is in the huge

database, all you need to do is ask. But then again? How? In what way? There are people who still struggle on getting the answers they want and unsure on how to construct proper sentences on the search bar. Let this also be a part of your learning.

4. Touch Typing

When you are in the Flow State any minor inconvenience could disrupt you and your chain of thoughts, and if you were to peek at your keyboard every single time you type, you're probably going have a lot of fixing to do. Fix that habit and type without having to divert your eyes away from the monitor.

5. Breaking Down Problems Visually

It's easy to get lost not knowing what to do next when you don't have any actual inputs you can track while doing things.

Be it kanban, jira or as simple as a task listing in excel or notepad, monitor your progress and path.

Although majority of us would skip this process since it's annoying, it does help a lot in it's own ways, both present and the future.

6. Reading Code Like a Book

Although we do this subconsciously, and there's not much to know how to actually be better at this, it's something we fail to acknowledge. Like the title says, it's the ability to skim through and get enough context to know what the codes actually does, understand it's flow and even notice it's flaws or limitations. There are a lot of people who put code as if they're inserting random gears on an engine hoping it would work, don't be like that. Understand and apply proper solutions.

7. Tapping Into Flow State And Focus

While having many things to do is great, switching between them can ruin your chain of thought, i personally think focus is what makes a good code. Stop trying to do so many things and label it as "learning" then call it a day. Try to actually focus on one thing and intensively learn on it.

8. Holistic Thinking

Holistic thinking is a crucial part in developing a system specially when it's big, I can almost guarantee this will help in speeding up the process and maintaining your code. Oftentimes, we are so fixated on making something work that we forget it breaks down other parts of the whole, making it a lot more problematic.

9. Performance Wise Coding

It's extremely important to be very careful in coding complex codes that affects the performance of the system. Like I said, almost every time we are fixated on making it work that we forgot how bad it will affect other things, although for most cases specially when the system isn't big, it won't have that much effect, but it's important to foster a mind that keeps performance in check every step of the way.

10. Writing Clear Commit/Comment Messages

When you're working on a company, you'd most likely if not inevitably work on a team, you can't just selfishly think they would understand the code you're writing, it's foolish to assume that just because it's written nicely. You will find yourself thanking someone else if this happens to you, try to make it a habit as if it's a message for the future one's that will work on the project.

There are a lot of things that goes unnoticed but are actually helpful in programming, in fact there should be a lot more than what is written here, thumbs up to those who already have the one's listed above. Programming is but an endless walk, not a steep hike.