Writing Clean Code with a Strict Mindset to the Rules
When you’re just starting out as a programmer, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype of writing clean code. Every tutorial, blog, or YouTube video seems to emphasize naming conventions, indentation, comments, and all the other “good practices.”
But here’s the thing — when you’re still learning, that shouldn’t be your main focus.
Focus on Getting the Logic Right First
When I first started writing code, I read tons of articles about how to write clean, maintainable, and scalable code. To be honest, that was one of my early mistakes. I thought writing clean code was the same as writing scalable or optimized code — but it’s not.
I found myself fussing over the little things that didn’t matter at that stage, instead of focusing on solving the problem. Writing clean code is important — it helps you read and fix bugs easily — but your priority as a beginner should be getting the logic down and making your program work first.
If you skip that and just follow every “rule” you read online, you’re not really developing your own style or creativity. You’re just memorizing and repeating — or as I like to call it, “chew and pour.”
Don’t Worry About “Code to Scale” Yet
Another common trap beginners fall into is coding “for scale.” You’ll often hear about software patterns, best practices, or how to design code that can handle thousands of users. But ask yourself — how many people are actually going to use the small project you’re building right now?
When you overthink scalability at the beginner stage, you take away the fun of learning. Bugs can be fun. They teach you how to think, debug, and improve. You can’t learn those lessons if you’re constantly trying to code like a senior engineer.
Reading Optimized Code Isn’t Easy
Optimized code is often hard to read — even for experienced developers. You can have a perfectly working program with solid logic and no bugs, but rewriting it to be optimized is a whole different challenge. It doesn’t just require understanding your own logic — you need to deeply understand the programming language itself.
Optimized code isn’t just better-written code; it’s usually the best out of many possible ways to solve the same problem. That takes experience — and you’ll get there, but only after you’ve built the foundation.
Final Thoughts
So here’s my advice to all beginners:
Stick to one programming language. Focus on how you solve problems. Turn your thoughts into algorithms and build your logic first — then worry about making it cleaner or faster later.
In the long run, this mindset not only makes you a better coder but also helps you truly understand what clean and optimized code means — because you’ve earned that understanding through experience.
Top comments (1)
As an advice to beginners it would seem like a glimmer of hope to entice us to keep learning on with full blaze and no stress, but here's the caveat:
You don't get to be a professional at something if you don't practice and excel at it. Stay with me here.
You'd hear a lot of people ranting about their interview experience all for similar things: optimization and patterns; patterns follow logic, and logic is geared towards being efficient.
And in the end, unless your code is going to end up as a hobbyist program that you built, manage and scale by yourself without others wringing your neck to squeeze the juice of productivity and bombard you with lessons on the need to keep a clean and refactored codebase all for the sake of a "well documented" project, you better start learning it as an aside to strengthen your bones. This is more than ethics. It's necessity. And there are others out there who can help make your journey easier, whilst empowering you to both have fun and watch out for loose code: they're those you can call on for help to give solid advice about coding. I might be deluded and perhaps too opinionated, but hey, clean code is a myth to a large degree anyways.
It just needs to be good enough.