Understanding Developers

Software developers have a set of tools in common, as well as an attitude associated those tools. Learn Enough teaches you both.

If you work with developers, or might like to become a developer yourself someday, you need to learn enough to be dangerous at the following:

1. The Unix command line
2. A text editor (or two)
3. Version control with Git

It also helps if you know things like HTML, CSS, and a programming language like Ruby or JavaScript, but the three skills above are a great place to start—and might even be a good place to finish!

The attitude, meanwhile, is what we at Learn Enough call technical sophistication, which is the ability to figure out technical problems on your own. It’s a tricky skill to teach, but the Learn Enough tutorials do it by showing you lots of examples and exercises. Just look for the phrase “this is classic technical sophistication” and you’ll catch on quick!

Developing these skills is a force-multiplier—suddenly you’ll be able to collaborate seamlessly with all kinds of “technical” people. Indeed, don’t be surprised to discover that you’ve become a “technical person” yourself!