Are you just starting programming for weeks or months? Then you need to read this.
Mistakes Beginner Programmers Make
Not Asking For Help
Don’t be shy to ask for help. During the journey I’m learning to code, I’m too shy to ask for help and end up wasting lots of time of getting stuck at something. If you get stuck on understand something, don’t be shy and ask for help. Many senior developers are happy to help, especially if you ask in programming forums.
Try it First Before Ask For Help
As a beginner, I encourage you to ask for help when you get stuck on something. Don’t get me wrong, asking for help isn’t a bad thing. But if you ask for help without try it, then it’s bad. It’s just too lazy of learning and solving the problems yourself. If you really want to learn something, It’s recommend trying it yourself first before you ask for someone else help.
Trying To Learn Everything at The Same Time
Don’t learn everything at the same time, you’ll end up overloaded. Programming is easy to start, but mastering a programming language isn’t as easy as you think. Each programming language has frameworks, API’s, libraries to learn. Although various programming languages are similar, but they are not the same.
Learn one programming language at one time. Although most programming languages are very similar, but it’s not recommend learning multiple programming languages in one go. If you do so, it can confuse, unless you have already mastered one programming language. Then you can get learn a new programming language quickly.
Try To Learn Many Programming Languages
Learning many programming languages doesn’t help you to get a job if you didn’t master at least one programming language. Learn one programming language at the same time, go deeper and master it before learning another programming language.
Overestimate Yourself
I knew that there are many tutorial that teaching you programming in a few hours by guiding you step by step of building a simple project. Learning to program isn’t only took a few hours of study and doing coding. Don’t underestimate how hard it took to learn to program and how long it takes to learn it. I believe dunning-kruger effect is true when I was learning to program. To master one programming language, it took years of effort not just building simple project by following programming tutorial.
Think Too Much But Never Do
Think about what you want to do and learn, but you did nothing at the end. Don’t overthink, just do it immediately whenever you want to learn something. I have seen many beginners including myself are wasting too much time on thinking about what to learn and what should I learn. Everything start from the fundamental. Once you start immediately, then you will know what to learn next. If you are completely a beginner, it’s recommend checking my guide to starting programming.
Give Up Too Early
Don’t give up too early. I’ve seen tons of beginners give up too early. Although programming is not for all people, don’t be sad to join my community group to get help. Give yourself at least a month to try before you leave. Don’t give up too early, unless you have another plan or becoming a programming doesn’t a pleasant path for you. Starting programming at 30 or 40 didn’t matter, it’s just about how you much effort you will put into it and the willingness to learn.
Learn To Write Clean Code
Learning to program is a marathon, things are keep changing. You must keep learning new stuffs when new technologies are replaced for the current one. It took me years to get myself really know how to write clean code as a self-taught developer after years of writing and reviewing code. It is not that difficult to write better code, I’ve built and combined all the common issues and mistakes that I always seen into JavaScript code optimization course to guide you write clean code with JavaScript.
Trying To Memorize The Code
I still remember the first time I learn to program, I was trying to remember all the syntax and statement I learned from every single online course I took. But end up, I don’t remember the code I memorize at all now. Don’t memorize the code, it’s a terrible way to learn programming. Learn how to use the syntax and understand how to code works, but not memorize the code.
More Beginner Programmer Mistakes
- Copy and paste the code without understanding it
- Build everything from scratch (Trying to reinventing the wheel)
- Don’t write comments
- Premature Optimization
- Keep Coding without Building Portfolio
- Jump to Advance course before master the fundamental
- Keep Learning The Fundamental repeatedly.