DEV Community

20 Tips For Learning to Code in 2020

Jessica Shepherd on May 13, 2020

Learning to code has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done, but also one of the most difficult. Since a lot of people have some ex...

Read full post

Bryan Baldwin • May 14 '20

Whatever you are using, set up a flow between

your editor
the results (visual, console, browser or whatever it is you are building)
the debugger (preferably with breakpoints and stepping, but don't be ashamed to printf)

Get away from IDE's asap. They teach you bad habits, such as

browsing through symbol drop downs instead of reading the code
inserting code you didn't ask for/want
breaking your pace with constant irrelevant interruptions for formatting and suggestions
bad behavior, crashing, confusing over-complicated interfaces

Jessica Shepherd • May 14 '20

Great additions!! Getting comfortable with the tools you'll be using can help so much.

Joe Klemmer • May 14 '20 • Edited

As one who learned programming before Google/StackExchange/etc. I would add that these resources should be the second, or even third, option to figuring something out. There's nothing intrinsically bad about searching for answers, but cut'n'paste won't help you truly understand what's happening.

1) Hit the books (RTFM really is a valid answer)
2) Ask for help/guidance
3) Google

That's probably a better path (unless your s**t is broken in production. Then it's whatever is the fastest).

Tomasz Kudlinski • May 14 '20

Great article!

Jessica Shepherd • May 14 '20

Thank you!

Abdullah • May 14 '20

Thanks for this. Great article

Jessica Shepherd • May 14 '20

You're very welcome!

FV • May 14 '20

That's a great article! Thanks!

Jessica Shepherd • May 14 '20

Thanks for reading!

codeclassifiers • May 14 '20

Nice Article

Jessica Shepherd • May 14 '20

Thanks :)

Mike Stover • May 14 '20

Very helpful!

Jessica Shepherd • May 14 '20

I'm glad it helped!

Tarek Hamaoui • May 14 '20

Well said!

Jessica Shepherd • May 14 '20

Thanks!

dmvjpg • May 20 '20

Valuable insights, especially on the roadmap. Thank you!

Danish Parvez • May 23 '20

All is great and helpful! Only one suggestion I would like to make, for doing notes or maybe everyting is Notion. Give it a try. It can be a thing for everything!