If you’re just starting out in programming, you might be feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information out there.
Here are some tips to help you organize your thoughts:
- Start small and build up gradually
- Document your progress.
- Don't compare yourself to others
- Practice, practice, practice
- Don't be afraid to ask for help! This is a great place to do just that!
Remember, learning to code is a journey, not a destination. It takes time, patience, and perseverance. Stay curious and keep learning!
For those of you who are a little more seasoned, what are some things you wish you’d known when you were starting out that would have made your journey a lot smoother?
Latest comments (33)
Surely discuss and work...it helps a lot...always being individualistic is not good for teamwork...also puts pressure on us...and even if we had made a mistake others will not be able to understand and suggest a solution.
Go slow on basics and let it get internalized and then try complex concepts to work or learn
Exactly! Commits with proper descriptions (and the ticket number ideally) can take you through the code of the feature in steps.
I am lost, i implement good practices of programming, read a book, use the documentation, read code of another person and try resolve a problem but i feel me at a standstill.
I think so that stay in the zero level and my colleague have the ten level in programming.
As a a person that have started over and over again from zero, and adapts as time passes, this level of simplification truly bugs me. This is nothing but a generic post with no substance for the actual people starting programming.
What I wish I had known before I started coding is that I don't have to know everything at once. It takes time and it's definitely okay 😊.
I am just a newbie and I find this really helpful. I must confess that I feel overwhelmed at the sheer volume of materials I need to learn in order to acquire the skills I need as a developer. The task ahead is such that sometimes I have nightmares knowing that there is no escape for me anytime soon.
But then again I discovered that there are wonderful people here willing to lend a helping hand to a brother.
To cut a long story short: the learning is tough and intimidating but the people I find in the Tech community are some of the most wonderful, helpful and smartest people you will find anywhere in the world, and together they have made the task less intimidating and more fun to participate in.
It is my goal to meet some really nice friends here, whom I can learn from and share other life experiences as the journey proceeds.
You are welcome, take the your time to consume the content you find here so you don't get overwhelmed.
As you learn, try to take a break and implement what you've learned so you don't end up in tutorial hell.
I'm a newbie too and share the same feelings described by Mgbejxi.
What do you mean by tutorial hell?
I was watching one just now about flex box. (:
Tutorial hell is when you move from one tutorial to another tutorial without ever building any anything to demonstrate what you've learned.
That I could be a programmer for a living.
Honestly, I avoided it for over a decade because I didn't think I'd be good enough. Instead I started out with the first role I landed, which was "PC Support" and went on to become a sysadmin. I never risked trying to change tack because I thought I wouldn't be able to hold my own against professional software developers.
What nonsense!
Build your own experiments. Don't be afraid to break stuff (safely and with backups)!
I guess I wish I had been more aggressive with writing my own test cases right from the start. All of my "coding" is customized, purpose-driven, and disposable in the end. So in that situation to be effective, it means you ended up have write your own tests and think of everything you need to check. You have to understand things like cascading event chains, etc.
But in the end, I suppose we all get to where we end up through a series of both brilliant wins and silly mistakes.
Comments aren't usually good in modern development. A lot of seasoned devs will tell you descriptive variables are usually better than comments.
E.g.
Instead of doing this:
//this function formats a date to a string readable format and displays the date with the time
Const dateFunction = () => {...}
Do this instead, and eliminate comments:
Const formatDateToReadableString = () => {...}
Avoiding comments keeps your code way cleaner and much easier to read.
This also distinguishes between an experienced and non experienced dev.
I agree that we should name or functions and variables in a descriptive way and write code that's as self-explanatory as possible.
But there are still several kind of useful code comments:
Uriel give @timothydjones comment a chance. It's actually not true that comments are a bad thing. I've been a programmer for over 20 years and what I've learned is that comments are very important in your code, even to yourself. The key in comments is to try never to write WHAT your code does, you write WHY that code was made for. Your code must be clear enough to understand what it does. And now yes, to be clear, properly rename the variables, the functions, the same as the parameters. Avoid short names, unless short names are enough.