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Pursuing Best Practices is a bad practice (When You're New)

Carlos Diaz on April 15, 2025

“I need to do this right, even though I don’t know what right is. What if I’m making mistakes that become habits? If I’m not doing it right, does t...
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Nishad Shegokar

I've been experiencing the same issue for a long time in various things that I've started only to leave thinking, "I'm not good enough."
But when I took up programming as a beginner, I still got those errors and wrong syntax in the prompt. But as I'm still going at it, my fear of failure has greatly diminished.
Great advice senior, I'll keep it in mind whenever I code.

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ann8th

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."
Niels Bohr

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As someone who’s been diving into new tech topics lately—including more obscure ones like codice fiscale inverso (reverse-engineering Italy’s tax code format)—I’ve found myself paralyzed by the same fear of “not doing it right.” It’s wild how much pressure we put on ourselves to get everything perfect before we even understand what “perfect” means. That mindset held me back for a while—until I realized that stumbling through imperfect solutions is actually the fastest way to learn.

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KC

A nice written article to remind us that practice makes perfect and Rome wasn't build in a day. Thank you.

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Ridwan Yinusa

Thank you, Sire Carlos; I needed this. “Projects are experiments in which we discover, make observations, and build mental models—they aren't examinations to prove our worth.”

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Boujee Best

True

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Zchnim

Well said.

"Don't optimize too early" aka do cleanups when you feel the grok hit: micro-celebrate that small victory by taking the luxury-time of a small cleanup while realaxing in the biogical reward for learning, and letting it sink in.

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MisterKrud

Thanks. I needed that. Brilliant, affirming article for beginners like myself.

“Perfect is the enemy of the good”

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Alvin Lin

Thank you, I needed this!

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AmalKrishnaS

Thanks for writing this. I really needed it. I've been facing this issue in learning anything not just programming. This blog acted as a reminder, so I'm grateful.

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tjl929

This is very good! Helps me to relax more in the learning process and not be so hard on myself. Very well written! :-)