Best advice that I got from my mentors is "It's okay to fail; don't be afraid of making mistakes".
My preferred way of teaching development work is to give simple tasks to gauge their programming skills and progressively increase the difficulty of tasks. When they complete their tasks, I like to ask a simple 'Why' with a smile, and let them answer their decision making process. May be following up with another question 'What could happen in xxx scenario? or 'Have you considered this scenario?'. Just help them understand the problem, but let them decide the implementation. If it's something that they weren't aware completely, I would just give few hints about the 'concept' or let them google and find the answers.
One more suggestion that I would give is not to be over-protective of the junior developers. When you see them making mistakes, it's very easy to jump in and help them solve their issues. But it wouldn't help them grow. So sometimes it's okay to let them fail. They can learn from their mistakes and come up stronger.
Best advice that I got from my mentors is "It's okay to fail; don't be afraid of making mistakes".
My preferred way of teaching development work is to give simple tasks to gauge their programming skills and progressively increase the difficulty of tasks. When they complete their tasks, I like to ask a simple 'Why' with a smile, and let them answer their decision making process. May be following up with another question 'What could happen in xxx scenario? or 'Have you considered this scenario?'. Just help them understand the problem, but let them decide the implementation. If it's something that they weren't aware completely, I would just give few hints about the 'concept' or let them google and find the answers.
One more suggestion that I would give is not to be over-protective of the junior developers. When you see them making mistakes, it's very easy to jump in and help them solve their issues. But it wouldn't help them grow. So sometimes it's okay to let them fail. They can learn from their mistakes and come up stronger.
Thanks Subbu, good tips! It is definitely harder than I thought to try to not give them the answer and let them work it out!