There are a few things I wish I knew when I started programming which probably would have saved me a lot of time and would have gotten me to where I wanted to get to - becoming a professional developer that is - quicker. Knowing these tips in advance would have given me a huge advantage and would have undoubtedly cut down the time it took for me to land my first job in the industry, and hopefully, some of these tips will help at least one of you reading this

Number one, and probably the most important thing on this list, is choose a path. I actually see a lot of people doing this, including myself, when we’re first starting out, we try to learn as many things as possible in an attempt to try to get to our goal of becoming a developer faster, but in reality that’s only slowing you down. Take a step back, and try to decide, what do you want to become, what are you passionate about, what do you want to create. If videogames are your passion and you can see yourself making videogames, then just zero in on game development and the language and technologies surrounding that. If you have a million-dollar app idea and want to bring it to life, that’s great, start learning as much as you can about mobile development. If you want to make websites or web applications web technologies and don’t bother wasting time learning anything outside of that, at least in the beginning. I’m not trying to say that you shouldn’t experiment or play around with new languages, or that learning too many things is wrong, if anything, that’s what makes programming fun, but I’m just trying to get you where you want to go, faster. In the world of programming, there will always be new things to learn, but having a plan while you’re starting out, will save you a lot of time, Every step you take without a clear direction is a wasted step.

So you chose a path, what now. My second tip would be to focus on one thing at a time. This might actually sound similar to the first one, but the context is different. See, choosing a programming field is the first step, but what you’ll quickly come to realize is that every field has a subsequent set of technologies that you could learn, as well as more specializations in that field. So if you decided, for example, to get into web development, then I recommend you focus on frontend web development, first. I believe it’s easier for newcomers to grasp, and it’s very rewarding because you get to create visual stuff, and the feedback loop is immediate. And when it comes to what to focus on in frontend web development itself, then start off with learning just HTML, don’t worry about making things pretty, just try to understand why certain code makes things appear on your browser in a certain way. After that, focus on CSS, and get a good understanding of it. Once you feel comfortable with HTML & CSS, even those two can get you a long way honestly, then start taking on vanilla JavaScript see, then focus on a specific framework after that. Then by that point, you’ll have enough knowledge to start applying to junior developer jobs. I know I make it sound simple, but honestly, having a plan on what to learn now, and I know I keep hammering on that, but it will make your process of becoming a developer simpler so that you can just worry about understanding the language and the concepts, not worry about what’s next.

Another thing I wish I knew is “do, don’t just watch or read”. A lot of beginner developers end up into what’s known as a tutorial purgatory, and I was one of those as well. You end up watching one course or tutorial after another, maybe you code along with the instructor, but then you only end up doing it over and over again, without really taking the time to make your own project, bringing your own ideas to life. Watching courses is a great way to learn something, but learning by doing will help you understand those concepts even better, it will force you to research solutions to problems on your own, rather than having them presented to you, and it’s great practice for when you’re actually going to be coding on the job since all developers have to learn and implement something on the spot as they go, and figure it out from there.

Another important point on this list is finding a community. Something that I should have done much sooner than I actually did, was finding a community to be a part of when I was first starting out. Connect with as many people as you can, if you can find someone who’s going through the same process as you are, and even better, pair-program with them, that will help you immensely. There are a lot of discord or slack channels out there in all the different phases of the journey, and even Twitter is a great place for beginner devs, so there’s definitely a community out there for you. And if you want me to point you in the right direction, if you haven’t checkout out 100 Days of Code, then give it a try! On the topic of community, something that would arguably be even more helpful is finding someone who’s willing to mentor and guide you throughout your journey, and even though that might be harder to find, there are still people out there that are willing to do so, a platform that I would recommend https://codingcoach.io/

Number five on this list is, get comfortable with reading other people’s code. Throughout your career, you’ll probably work on more brownfield projects rather than greenfield ones. That means you’ll most likely end up working on maintaining projects that have already been established, rather than create something from scratch. Obviously, this isn’t always the case, since some of you might end up working at a hot, new startup that’s now rolling out their product, but the chances that you’ll end up maintaining and adding features to an existing project are greater. And even if you do end up in a startup creating something from scratch, you’ll still have to interact with the code of your peers and even review it.

Last but not least, you’ll end up writing less code than what you actually think you will. Programming is not actually about writing code, it’s about solving problems, and that’s what you’ll be getting paid to do. Programming is just a way of us translating solutions into machine-readable language. But before we even form a solution to a problem, you’ll first have to discuss that problem with your peers, present possible ways and ideas on how to approach it, make a case on why one approach is better than the other, and only then you’ll find yourself translating that into code. Basically, that’s a very long-winded way of me saying that programming is first and foremost about communication, even when it comes to the code itself, always remember that you’re writing your code to communicate to your peers what that piece of code is doing. So whether it is actual soft skills or readable code, keep in mind that you’re getting paid to be a good communicator first and that will get you further in your career than just having the mindest of being an individual contributor.

You now know 6 more things than what I knew when I first started coding, and that already gives you an advantage! So what are you waiting for, start coding and keep those things in mind! Thank you for taking the time to read this, ‘till next time!