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Vicente G. Reyes
Vicente G. Reyes

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How do you recover from coding after a long break?

I consider myself a full stack developer knowing django and reactjs but after at least 10 months of not coding, I forgot how to create a react component, forgot how database stuff work with django and stuff like that. How do you recover from this state?

Top comments (4)

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ddani profile image
Daniel Castro

Simply: don’t rush. You have not forgot how to code, because coding is about other stuff than knowing in deep a language or framework.
It will come back even faster that if you move to another tech stack

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Tive Inc

You can add a new certification, learn a new programming language or even brush up your expertise at a coding bootcamp. You can take online courses or go to a local community college or technical school. The more current you are, and the more recent your training is, the shorter your break will look.

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Chris Partridge

Usually just throw myself back into the deep end - grab a task off the board, run through the problem in my head, make sure requirements are met, jot down some notes, and then get cracking - no point wasting time.

If you get stuck, Google/Stackoverflow are still there :)

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Keff

Interesting, I guess each individual handles this in its own way and depends on the amount of time you've been doing it for. For example, if you've been working for 1 year, you might forget a good amount of knowledge in 10 months. But if you've been working for 10 years, 10 months is not that much, so you might not forget too much stuff.

This is the case with technical sports for example, a climber that has climbed for 20+ years takes a 3 month break and not that much will change, but if you've been climbing for 1 year, a 3 month break can almost put you back at 0.


Now, in my case for example I haven't had that big of a break from coding, as I've been working for the last 7 years without more than 3 weeks of vacations straight. Though I can kind of relate, as I've changed projects and languages quite a bit for long periods of time.

In my experience the initial comeback is quite hard, as you feel you should be able to know all this stuff, because you knew it before. This is the thing, brains are incredible, and sometimes, even though you might not remember something right now, after you dive into it again, it's more than likely that you will remember most of it. Or at least re-learn it a lot faster.

That's my grain of salt, let's see what other people have to say!