As a Software Developer, I started my journey in the Software Industry at Novell from where I moved to Citrix and later to Amazon. Being in this industry for close to 6 years now, I have met and learnt from many wonderful intellectuals and have worked with them on various top class products that directly or indirectly impact billions of lives worldwide.

I have experienced diverse corporate cultures, working environments, software development practices and processes. During this journey where I accomplished some distinguished feats and also committed many silly mistakes, I have learnt lot of things of which I think some should be helpful and of interest to the aspiring Software Engineers. You may check out the points mentioned in the previous articles in this series. Here is another one-

Use better tools and know them better

The field of software development is ever changing and demanding, and there are really nice tools available to make your life simpler. With time the methods and tools have and continue to evolve. Guess what, the best part is that many of the amazing tools are open-source and available for free. As an example, Eclipse is a widely used, open-source, freely available IDE that has plugin support for almost everything you would want to do with an IDE.

In many colleges, people still use compilers like Turbo C++ while the world has moved into next millennium. If you are not exploring, learning and using better tools, it's like trying to cut wood using stone-age axe instead of the chainsaw that is there lying around the corner.

Also, most of the people that use newer and better tools just like their smartphones - use and flaunt them every day but don't know about many functionalities that are there or can be added to further enhance the usage experience. It is wise to invest time to know and learn about those cool functionalities or enhancements and simplify your life even more.

My sincere suggestion is to explore on internet and find out the best latest tools available which are relevant to your area of study, work or interest; I am sure you'll find many even for free. Try out and see which ones suit your needs and liking better. Then learn more about the existing features and add-ons that may be available to make it even better.
This is one of the things that I seriously think an aspiring Software Engineer should know. Keep watching for more. If you are keen on learning more about the better software development practices you can start following right from the college days, do get a copy of my first book "Hello World - Student to Software Professional" published by Partridge (A Penguin Random House Company). Now available worldwide on all the MAJOR ONLINE Stores - Amazon, Google Play, Flipkart, Barnes & Noble and many others.