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When I'm coaching developers earlier in their career, I struggle with the super-power of seniors vs. the necessity of juniors.
"The ability to focus on one concern at a time is possibly the mark of a senior developer."
vs.
"The trick for juniors, is they’re always learning more than one thing at a time, often on accident."
Telling them to focus on this one thing because that's how I'd do it doesn't feel great. What "focus-enhancing suggestions" have you used to help junior devs?
Quotes are from https://therealadam.com/2022/11/21/one-thing-at-a-time-incrementally/.
Therein, I was surprised how legitimately universally applicable the mantra "only solve one problem at a time" is.
In an industry always seeking silver bullets but coming up with imposters, this advice stands out as a pretty dang good "one weird trick for successful projects" piece of advice.
@therealadam Not sure if it counts, but I try to encourage figuring out what *specifically* they find confusing or can’t figure out in a situation. Or rephased – what specific bit of knowledge they think would help them proceed. It’s easy to get stuck in a vague state of “it doesn't work”.
Sometimes, just making yourself analyse it at that level helps you figure it out then and there. If not, it helps you know what to search for or ask about.
@henrik great idea! I like pivoting from “it doesn’t work” to what knowledge might fix it. Probably asking them to enumerate the knowledge too, to avoid focusing on magical solutions (unplug the computer) or resorting to whack-a-mole.
@therealadam “is this the root problem?”