Looking back in hindsight is always a beautiful thing. Here are five of the biggest mistakes I think I personally made when learning to code, so you don’t fall for the same traps!
🌱 Not researching properly before starting - Not having a clear idea of what sort of technology interested me, to begin with, was a mistake. I didn’t understand what the languages all did, I didn’t know what a either a “full-stack” or “front-end” developer was and therefore couldn’t choose what I wanted to learn. This meant I took a few months before I then realised that web development and Javascript was for me which wasted valuable time and effort in the process.
🚀 Not having a clear goal or plan - When I started, I just wanted to get “good at code”. I didn’t initially have a goal to work towards and I realise now that defining these targets to work towards massively boosts my productivity.
👨🎓 Course swapping - Swapping between whatever course looked interesting seemed fun at the time, but it meant I was re-learning things I had already learnt and never implementing them into real-world applications and practising them. I always say you can't learn to play a musical instrument by reading sheet music, you need practical experience and to practice over and over.
😧 Skipping hard concepts - This one doesn’t need any explanation, but I would skip or gloss over hard concepts. Spending three months learning one concept will be better for you in the long run, even if it seems your progress has slowed! I have also found that not having an understanding at least to be able to explain some core concepts of web development will bite you in the ass. Initially, I was quite happy to just say "I'm just a doer. I can implement things but not explain how or why it is working." I still struggle with this to this day!
📈 Comparing my self to others - I learn fairly slowly, so comparing myself to others was a mistake as my confidence was often knocked! We all learn at different paces, so try not to track your progress against anyone else because it will likely end in tears!
What mistakes did you make whilst learning to code? Would you do anything differently if you were to start again?
Top comments (3)
good reading.. I find myself still making some of these mistakes until today after years of working in development. Specially with new tech
Yes, I still make some of these errors now from time to time. My worst habit is still probably diving into things head first...
But to be fair, it seems like it's not easy to make such mistakes when someone first learning programming (which means that I've also done/doing similar things) and have no idea what's going on. You are at least ended that stages. I'm still in there.