So many new coders come in brimming with newfound technical knowledge. As we've all experienced, however, the books and classes seldom offer anything to prepare a coder for the bizarre intricacies of the industry they are entering, nor the nuances of the art form of coding.
If you could give one, and only one, piece of advice (ideally in a single paragraph) to a new coder, what would you tell them?
Top comments (7)
In the book Zero to One, Peter Thiel makes the point about how most of a new company's value will be achieved about ten years from now or more, once it has achieved a solid foothold in the market and has scaled its processes and really figured things out. The point is that a lot of people get caught up in the current situation and think short term.
Your career is very similar. Most of the money you will make, the impact you will have, etc. will be years down the road, so for now, your job is just to get over some of the initial hurdles and take things a day at a time. We often get caught up in our current skill set (or lack thereof) and get really stressed about it. Take the time to realize how much further along you were than when you had never coded at all and how much more you will know in a decade. And in the meantime, just do your best.
Obligatory I don't support Thiel's politics note 🙃
It occurred to me that I never left my own piece of advice: Never question if you're a real coder. If you've run a single line of code, you are a real coder. Yet, you must always remember that no matter how experienced you are (or aren't), you can always learn more.
Trust the process; stick to the experience. There's no shortcut in becoming better aside consistency in practice, learning and re-learning, teaching and of course, applying the skills you've learned to solve practical problems.
Nobody knows everything, don't pretend that you do, don't waste time trying to prove yourself by manually doing something for the sake of doing it (maybe the pattern already exists in the codebase), and for the love of God, there's no shame in asking how to do something.
Nobody knows what they are doing
HAH, so true! I wish I could "like" this more than once.
Especially if the code is meant to run in a browser, my advice would be "20% of your time should be invest in staying up-to-date".