Mistakes when learning to code

In this article, I want to go over mistakes you may make when learning to code. This can also be considered advice when learning to code honestly, however you want to take it. I had 4 points that came to my mind that I think can big time change your way from learning improperly to learning properly.

Tutorial Hell

The first one is the famous tutorial hell. Tutorial hell was something I myself was in, doing tutorials for over 2 years straight, and then thinking I'm a full-stack developer, little did I know, I had a hard time coding up stuff with just HTML and CSS.

It made me on one hand really demotivated to continue coding, I put in so much time just doing tutorials, I'm supposed to be able to code up anything now right?

That's when I realized, I never struggled. Struggling is where you actually learn. If you don't struggle, it likely means you're not on the right path when learning. It is a good point to assess if you're doing things correctly, by asking yourself: How comfortable am I right now?

My advice to summarize: Spend more time building stuff and struggling than doing tutorials, your future self will thank your current self.

Not focusing

When learning to code, oftentimes the primary goal is to find a job. Learn to code and then find a job. A lot of beginners, including myself at the time, want to learn everything and so many things.

What can happen is, instead of focusing on learning the stuff necessary for you to find a job, depending on the field you have chosen within software development, for web development that could be for example HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you end up jumping around and learning a bit of numerous stuff, which won't actually help you and just waste your time.

Focus on learning what you need to get that job as a developer and once you have that job, feel free to jump around however you want like a bunny in your spare time.

Not journaling

I think journaling and assessing yourself is super important when you're trying to accomplish a great goal with a timeline in mind.

You want to improve every week, every month, in order to perform better as time pass.

Try to journal every evening, assessing yourself, how your day went, what you could have done better, and what you were proud of.

It is good, to be self-aware and have the mindset of knowing that there is always room for improvement.

Not researching

Well, this may not be a mistake, but rather an advice. Spend time researching and improving your research skills.

By researching, I don't mean just Googling. When you do Google, pull up multiple links, read them thoroughly, and make sure to take advantage of Google.

Fireship has an amazing video on how to improve your google searches: How to "Google It" like a Senior Software Engineer.

Golden advice

Golden advice I wish someone would have given me, and not me having to find it out myself: If the documentation isn't enough, and you feel like you need more practical examples and seeing how people have implemented a certain technique/approach/framework, whatever that may be, use Github's search.

Once I learned this technique, honestly, I rarely feel like: How do I even implement this into my code?

Another thing that is really useful, is if you don't want to search for code, but see how others have used a certain technology that is open-sourced on Github.

Comments

[poisonintheink]

Can I add and stress 'minimum viable product'. Have a crack, make a janky version. Iterate.

Don't shy away because it seems insurmountable. It's not.

[Shubham Tiwari]

I want to add few more 😂😂

1. Write Those codes somewhere which we use multiple times in different projects so that we don't have to solve same thing again and again , like some animation or design code like a Navbar.
2. At the end of the day , Get back to your life because coding is just a part of our work but not our entire life , enjoy , play games , hang out and chill.
3. Whenever you learn something even a small concept,try to play with it with every possible way , like when I got to know about JS slice() method , i tried to use it with multiple values and in multiple ways just to see it has any exceptions or not because these methods can behave differently with different values and usage.
4. In web development, whenever you create a project and finish it , host it on a free domain like Netlify or vercel , it can help you in interview by showing the interviewer your projects directly.
5. Never feel like you know everything, because then you wouldn't be able to learn new things Cheers 🍻🍻

[mohmmadmoussa1988]

Thank you, I think its a good edition, just fix the last sentence please "you wouldnt"

[ADS-BNE]

Oh I know Tutorial Hell well.

When I was a very junior I wanted to learn React as it was the hot new thing everyone was talking about. So I Googled a beginners React tutorial.

I learnt in that tutorial that React required something called Node.JS. So I opened another tab and Googled a beginner Node.JS tutorial.

I learnt Node.JS required some command line knowledge. So I opened another tab and Googled a beginner command line tutorial.

And so on and so on.

[Majeekboy]

Great article! If I hadn't heard of the tutorial hell, I know I would've definitely fallen into that trap. The greatest tutorial one can have when learning how to code is by practising and building stuff. When we watch tutorials or read documents, we observe knowledge, but when we practice, we apply knowledge which will lead to proficiency.

[MD Sarfaraj]

Thanks for sharing, nice one

[Vishwas Tyagi]

The Tutorial Hell. I hve been there.

[EnriqueSource]

Good advice to keep in mind. Thanks for sharing them

[प्रथमेश | Prathmesh 🌟]

Vaild points