TLDR; Scribble first code later.

Paddle before you dive

I think that as a novice programmer I, and a lot of others have made the same consistent sets of mistakes. Saying that, the most consistently painful of mine has been an utter lack of planning.

I wish that I had learned earlier that the simple act of taking out a pen and paper to just roughly sketch out an implementation or idea would make my life 1000 times easier.

It's all too easy to get overexcited about an idea or a quick fix for an assignment and dive headfirst in to suddenly crack hard against a brick wall. Something that would have been fixed so quickly by taking 10 minutes to hash out the idea, maybe even come up with some actual edge cases. It almost goes without saying that more than half of the act of programming is about solving the problem, but its easy to get carried away and try to solve that problem on the fly.

Slowing down

The act of simply sketching a couple of ideas or hashing out some abstract attributes forces you to think about the problem in ways that are certain to save hours of time and effort down the road.

Pushing it a little further and asking for the opinion of a peer, especially if they're of a similar level of proficiency as you only adds to this.

You're not asking for a solution from them, just an extra pair of eyes to see what you miss.

The volume of trouble I'd have saved by learning this is immense, but that's all part of the process! So go and get a pencil and some paper, scribble out you're grand plans, and hopefully, avoid the pitfalls.

Your thoughts

What skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career, either as a programmer, a student or otherwise? What heartache might it have saved you in the long run?