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Lucas Alley
Lucas Alley

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What I wish I knew as a beginner

1. Get comfortable with mental blocks

Since starting my coding journey two years ago I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've ran into a problem that felt like I'd never solve. Hours and days spent wondering if I'm actually cut out for this. You will always have these moments throughout your coding journey. These blocks are easily the greatest learning opportunities you will encounter. So look forward to them and just know with each one you get past, (because you will get past them), the next one gets a little bit easier.

2. Constantly Comparing

The worst thing you can do is compare yourself to other devs. Like all social media you're only seeing the highlights. You don't get to see the years of learning, days and weeks spent struggling to find a solution to a problem, you get the idea. Everyone started as a code newbie. :)

3. Breaking out of tutorial hell

Be specific about what you want/need to learn. Don't do a course for the sake of doing it. Go into the course knowing what you want out of it. This is best paired when working on a project and needing to implement something that you lack knowledge of.

Hopefully this will help you stay sane along your coding journey. If it were easy everybody would be doing it! :)

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Willem Odendaal

And keep reading/experimenting/watching courses, always. Being a coder goes together with life-long learning. You won't often have time during working hours, so after-hours study is essential.