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-

Update yourself and keep learning

I really like what doctors and lawyers say that they are practicing. Not sure if most of them understand the depth of the word but essentially it communicates that they are not done with learning and still learning by practicing. I haven't found any engineer using that word. We would just say working.

My friend from Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) was telling that their Computer Science curriculum has not been updated for last 10 years at least. This means that even in such a reputed institute, you would be studying today exactly the same thing which at least 10 batches before you have studied. Don't you think that the things would have moved forward a lot since?

For four years you may blame the institute but afterward you can't even do so. In this field, everyday many technologies are coming and many are going out of fashion. You need to keep yourself updated and constantly learning because your job should stay whether a technology does or does not.

My sincere suggestion would be keep yourself apprised of what is happening in the tech world, what new technologies related to your field are there and are creating a buzz. You should invest sometime in learning at least the basics of these and keep yourself updated.

This is one of the things that I seriously think an aspiring Software Engineer should know. If you think some point should be added to this topic or some topic deserves to be added to this series, do post a comment and let me 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.