Intro

These are some mistakes that everyone makes unknown and becoming conscious and avoiding these mistakes would level you up as a programmer and also save you precious time

here are some common mistakes

NOT Reading the docs

Jumping into the game without knowing the rules is stupid likewise getting started with new technology without knowing what tools it provides is fullish

Has it ever happened that you are learning a new tool or technology and you are stuck again and again in some silly mistakes? It might be because you don’t completely understand the tech behind it.

Yes, I know It might be scary at first to read the whole doc or you might think it’s too time-consuming as a newbie but it’s the best way you can learn and it would save you a tone of time in the long run

Tips to read documents

• Be patient - Usually, reading takes more time than watching a quick tutorial. But it’s not necessary that every time you learn there are tutorials or quick guides but most of the time you would find the doc for the same tech which is written by the same people who have developed it

• Understand technical words - Many times as a newbie you can’t understand many concepts it’s because usually while writing these docs they don’t consider a newbie reading these. So if you don’t understand something google it and keep on trying you will get there

• Tips for reading docs

Over time you would know how to learn to read efficiently

Tutorial hell

Q What is Tutorial hell?

ANS: It’s a state where you watch video after video for learning something without actually doing it by yourself and you feel like you have understood everything. But many times you didn’t understand anything

How could you know that you are in tutorial hell?

A lot of people do not realize that they are in a tutorial hell ask yourself a tough question

Q Can you code what you saw without looking at the tutor's code?

Q did you completely understand what you copied from StackOverflow?

Q Can you make a project from scratch on your own?

If NO then you are in tutorial hell 🥲

Getting out of tutorial hell

• Acknowledging that you are in tutorial hell is the first step to getting out of tutorial hell

• Stop watching any videos and start building a project on your own if you lost your way read the official docs

• Surf GitHub like you surf youtube and find answers there by reading how people code for similar problem statement

• Reading code is important

watching 5-10 hrs videos wouldn't make you a better programmer 💀

only practice and practice will make you better 💪

Not Reading the error message

Is your first reaction after an error running a code again without changing anything thinking it would work this time then you are like me 🤣🤣

As a programmer, you will always get error messages but how quickly you can understand and resolve that error so you can get other errors is what will differentiate you from others.

How to resolve an error

• Get comfortable with the error

• Usually, an error message would mention the line where the error occurred which would narrow your search

• Google your issue it's very likely that some other person got the same error and people would have helped him.

• If you can’t find your anywhere post your error with proper context of what you wanted to achieve, a screenshot of the code, and an error message on StackOverflow or any platform people will always try to give you the solution

Not writing Human readable code

“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.” ~ @martinfowler

Always think your code is been viewed by other people and whether it is easily readable by other people

Give a proper variable name even if means the variable has a long name following naming patterns like camelCase, kabab-case, and snake_case is essential How to give variable names

Commenting correctly is a skill

explaining what a function does - what parameters it takes as input what output should you expect should be mentioned

Ideally, your code should contain variable and function names such that they explain themself and you w comment should be reduced

FOMO in tech

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” ~ @ThomasHenryHuxley

I know that feeling when everyone you know is learning something new continuously and you see some of them getting great opportunities through that and you also feel to learn that tech. But that can be very harmful as you would be jumping all over the place

You should try many things especially if you are in your 20’s it’s a huge advance you can try new tech but after finding what you love doing master it

Don’t be a “Jack of all trades, master of none”

Chasing everything won't take you anywhere

Don’t find the perfect language to code if it’s popular chances are it’s really good. So rather than learning about a specific language learn about design patterns learn about the underline concepts and you would have a much easier time transferring to any language

Overcome FOMO

• How to overcome Fomo in tech (Recommended)
• Have a clear goal in mind
• Take one step at a time

Building all alone

Lines of code

Google 2,000,000,000 2 B

Microsoft 50,000,000 50M

Facebook 62,000,000 62M

Even the best programmer can’t build any of these all alone it’s a collective effort of humankind that we have reached such far

Big things take time and effort and having a good team would give you a boost like no other it can be deciding factor

The next obvious question would be Q How can I find people which are like-minded? Q How can I network with people? Q How can I make my learning process more fun?

Sitting in your mom’s basement would definitely not help

Networking with the right people is important and finding like-minded people is easier than ever. Social media is a very powerful tool for networking and used correctly can change your life

join coding communities some of my favorites @blueLearn @CommunityClassroom @codedamn @fireship

Places to grow your network

• Meetups
• Hackathons
• social media
• Opensource

Document while building and share your learnings with others learn from others' mistakes on their Twitter/blog #Learninpublic And one day your sharing will help others 🤗.

Thinking >> coding

I see many newbies jumping directly to the code without knowing what are they implementing and when they get stuck they think this is “too hard I can’t do it.”

If you remove logic from the code you are just a typer

Coding is logic building

Understand the problem first. Break the problem into smaller problems and write pseudo-code once you wrote the pseudo-code now you can easily implement the code in any language

Learning about problem-solving, Learning about Data-structure, and algorithms are important, and by learning it I don’t mean mastering DSA and doing competitive coding I mean getting an idea. look how can you use DSA practically in your programs.

Outro

Rome was not built in a day

The pyramid was built by 20,000 people over 20 years

Learn consistently and soon you will be good.

Keep learning