3 tips to improve as a human developer: Vue conf 2025 notes and reflections

Introduction

Still bursting with energy and inspiration from my recent trip to Tampa for Vue Conf, I sit down to reflect on what I learned. Three things stand out. It turns out, while I did learn an incredible amount of technical tips and tricks, what I’d like to share with you are suggestions to grow as a human.

I feel that I learned a lot about myself this week, and so I distilled all that self reflection down into these three tips for you to grow as a person and as a developer.

Tip 1: Find your community

The amazing thing about working with a technology like Vue is that there’s an incredible community around it. We are humans first, developers second, so community provides valuable support in growing both your technical and personal skills.

I think it’s important to consider when you are networking that it is for inspiration, not just job opportunities. View your relationships as opportunities to learn from others, better yourself through discussions, and in general grow as a human, rather than as a transactional activity that brings you closer to fame or profit. This growth is what makes us better people - not really how quickly we adopt a new tech or learn a programming concept. Essentially, it’s the human side of tech, and if you are a human then this is important for you!!

I’ll illustrate this idea with a personal anecdote from this week at Vue Conf. Some backstory: I have been resistant to adopting AI agents in my workflow. Partly because I know that my brain learns best when I code something myself, and partly for…well, the reason that I don’t like to do something just because someone else thinks it is a good idea - I need to have a personal understanding of why I’m doing it, or my brain just doesn’t latch on. While I’d downloaded Cursor and used it as a code editor, and sometimes asked Claude for advice, it had been a struggle for me to adopt AI thoughtfully and effectively. While there’s nothing wrong with this struggle, I did not have the best attitude about it, and was becoming grumpy regarding my coworkers’ genuine and thoughtful attempts to help me improve my AI usage.

What I realized (with the help of a patient and incredible team lead) is that what mattered here wasn’t really the fact that I was not quick to understand or adopt AI, but that I was having a resistant attitude to it. It’s fine to not click with something immediately, but that doesn’t mean you have to reject it and shut down. Instead, you can get help through talking about other people’s usages and experiences, being genuinely curious, and drawing on ideas from the community around you. This could look like prompting AI agents while pair programming - to learn how someone else uses it - or discovering techniques to scaffold a project before unleashing an AI agent on it to give it better context. These are two ideas that were shared with me by members of the community this week, but I would not have been ready to learn from them if I hadn’t adjusted my attitude first.

Here are some action steps for you to build your community:

• Take advantage of opportunities to meet up with people in reality or virtually. Meetups, conferences, workshops - they exist locally and online. These are actually opportunities for growth. And if you can’t find one that works for you, try creating your own. This could be as simple as inviting a developer friend (or two or three) to enjoy a virtual (or real!) coffee chat with you, and just sharing ideas and experiences with each other in an unstructured setting. Trust me, it’s fun!

• Always assume you can learn something from someone. Everyone has something to add to the soup of life. You are not going to be the smartest person in the room, and that’s a good thing! We want to improve and grow our skills, which means we need to encounter people who know more about something than we do. (And if you don’t want to improve yourself, then you may want to reevaluate your life a little bit…)

• Don’t be afraid to share your own experiences, however insignificant they may seem to you. There is most likely someone out there who can learn from you too. Your perspective is valid and valuable to the community, so share it!

Tip 2: Learn and accommodate your limitations

Find where you are resistant to things, and lean into that resistance. We are resistant to things that are difficult and that we don’t understand. Often, that’s a place where there is actually an opportunity for growth. Instead of avoiding the things that are difficult for you, ask why they are giving you problems. These are your limitations. They can be found in technical skills, personal skills, or really anywhere!

Then, once you know where you experience a limitation, actually accommodate for it instead of brute force “trying to do better” (spoiler alert: that doesn’t really work!). Take steps to fill in the gap that you’ve discovered by changing your process to better fulfill your needs. It’s easy to become defeatist about your limitations, but instead think of them as opportunities for curiosity, innovation, and growth.

Here’s a personal example: I know I tune out in long talks. Focus is a resource that must be carefully managed, and indeed it is quite elusive for me to understand how to do so. Additionally, I don’t excel with auditory processing (both limitations as a part of my experience of ADHD). Sure enough, within a day long workshop on Monday, I started to lose my ability to think around 2:30 or 3PM. Unfortunately, since I couldn’t force my brain to go further, I missed an opportunity to learn some things.

What would I do differently next time? Instead of just “trying to take better notes” and forcing my way through this limitation, why not adopt a workflow like using a transcription service to better accommodate myself? This tip was actually drawn from the community as well. After describing my experience to him, Daniel Roe suggested I try out using Granola AI for helping to record notes in meetings and/or conference talks/workshops. It transcribes everything said and then abstracts the main points into notes for you to return to. It doesn’t have to replace manual note taking either. You can still write down things that stand out to you in your physical notes, but at least with the transcription you have the whole talk documented and don’t miss things because you were too tired or overloaded to notice them.

The important point I’d like to make on limitations is - similar to me admitting my attitude about using AI before I could receive advice - here I needed to recognize my limitation before I could benefit from the idea of using a tool like Granola. If I didn’t think I needed the help, I would simply ignore the suggestion.

Here is an action step for learning your limitations:

• It’s generally helpful to remember that you are not perfect and can always learn something from someone, so don’t discount advice you hear or assume it won’t help you.

Tip 3: Document your life

After an inspiring Lightning Talk on Wednesday about side projects from Nerando Johnson, I decided to return to my own project and realized I had no idea what was going on. This was because I didn’t leave myself any notes. I had no documentation about what components were doing or even how to use my own app. In fact I thought there was a bug where the app was working exactly as I had built it because I didn’t remember what the user experience was supposed to be! I thought I would “just remember” what to do next.

This experience triggered a realization: obviously I needed better documentation for my side project, but in addition to that it’s important to document your life like you would document your projects. How many times have you done something cool and then forgot about it? Then, when presented with a new challenge, not remembering that you previously conquered many challenges, you feel impostor syndrome and anxiety about the challenge in front of you. This leads to confusion, a lack of understanding of your own progress and limitations, and even a low sense of self worth.

Keep track of progress. When you accomplish something, record it somewhere, and let your community know (because they might remind you later when you desperately need it!). Then, periodically read over your record to remind yourself that you actually can do the things. This can be especially helpful for people with ADHD who tend to live in the immediate moment and forget where they came from, but I think it’s a valuable skill for anyone to develop.

In addition to not forgetting where you’ve come from, you don’t want to forget where you’re going. So write down what is the next thing you need to do. Did you realize you have a limitation and need to learn how to use a transcription service? Write it down as an action item (or even have Granola record it for you!). Even better: write it down and enlist the help of someone in your community to remind you to actually fulfill the promise to yourself to do that thing.

Here is an action step for documenting your life:

• Self reflection is so important for self growth, but you can’t reflect if you don’t remember what’s happened to you. So make records of your experiences and regularly plan time to reflect on them.

Bonus tip: Learn first, then do!

These tips aren’t going to work if you just take my word for it. It turns out that you need personal reasons in order to improve as a human being. I can tell you all day long to document your life but the truth is, until you realize how much of a difference it makes and what lack it fills in your life, you’re not going to care enough to actually do it.

Self discovery is the first step to self improvement. This is similar to in software development how you can’t fix a bug until you understand what is going wrong. Jump in and immediately start coding a solution, and you’re unlikely to get very far or even solve the correct problem. You need to look over that stack trace, follow the string of issues, until you get to the core issue. In addition, it may turn out to be a better learning experience if you discover it yourself rather than relying on someone else’s explanation of it (although of course collaboration in software as well as personal development is indispensable, as I’ve already been attempting to demonstrate).

So go forth and reflect on yourself, build your community, discover your limitations, and document your success. Good luck debugging your life!

Also, if you write on Hashnode and especially if you are part of the Vue community I would love to connect - please share your info in the comments so I can follow you, thanks!

I’m also on LinkedIn and Bluesky, links below.

Thanks for reading. :)

Resources

• Get help with transcribing notes with Granola AI

• Build your community and connect with me on Bluesky or LinkedIn!