Which development skills have you acquired after 7-10++ years of experience in OO development?

Question

Some development skills, like refactoring operations, feel like they have an almost unlimited pontential for learning - only the fool will say he's finished learning that.

Other skills are bound to specific tools, and being good developers we learn new tools most of the time.

But some skills are related to how you think about code and how you approach coding, sometimes how a specific tool feature can be applied. Rotating pair programming and working closely with other people seem to be the best way of acquiring these skills, though certainly not the only method. (And sometimes you learn things you SHOULD have learned 5 years ago, these are not the ones I am asking about)

So I want to pair program with all of StackOverflow:

What are your late-acquired coding skills ?

Edit: I suppose I'm not thinking about the things you would have learned as a part of the curriculum if you were coming right out of school today.

Answer 1

Only when I realised that I needed people skills to complement my technical skills did I really start developing my career.

Amazing how often this is overlooked by programmers or seen as unimportant compared to 'development skills'.

Answer 2

It may seem silly and obvious but... I think this has required a lot of years to get the hang of it as far as I'm concerned :

• Knowing when to write comments where they are really needed.
• Knowing when NOT to write comments, because the code is now self-documenting enough.