5 Mistakes Beginner Programmers Make
In this video I want to share with you 5 biggest mistakes that I've seen in beginners during the last 10 years. As I'm doing lots of interviews and answering questions of the students I see lots of same problems in a lot of beginners. Also make sure to watch this video until the end because I will share with you my bonus beginner mistake which is really valuable for any programmer even not a beginner. So let's jump right into it.
Want fast results. Become programmer in a week
The most often thing that I see in people is that they want to jump in programming fast. They start with trying to find shortcuts like courses "Becoming a developer in a month" or bootcamps which promise to teach you programming during weekend and normally cost quite a lot of money.
With such approaches you will just loose your time and money. And maybe also a wish to become a programmer.
So here is the boring truth. You won't become a programmer in a month or after 1 bootcamp and I didn't see any person who became. It's simply not possible. You brain needs time to digest new knowledge. And the amount of knowledge that you need to learn in programming is enormous. The other point is that you need time to learn how to find answers, debug your code, find your mistakes in code and much more. The realistic time for beginner is at least several month every evening to see some small results.
Fear, not smart enough
The next most often attitude that I see is that people have fear of programming or they think they are not smart enough. Normally they download some book or open some youtube video, it looks too complicated for them and they stop. Or they start by learning basics correctly but they are every minute getting discouraged by mistakes, errors, not working code and so on.
You need to understand that as a beginner you need lots of time just to do simple things. This is fine. You will do million mistakes and typos. This is also fine. You will google a lot, watch hundreds different tutorials and you will feel like you are burning your time and not progressing. But finding own typos, fixing errors and finding solutions are skills that you need to develop and you will do it subconsciously.
Comparing yourself with other people / people with experience
This is why we are coming to the next point. A lot of people think that they are not smart enough by comparing themselves with other programmers. Students write me really often with question about how much time did I spend on some project and saying that they are doing it already a week and it's super difficult for them. And if I say that I did it in 1 hours they are super discouraged because they think that they must do it also in 1 hour. But for some reason they forget that I'm doing programming 11 years which is also 50k hours doing something with code. The only person with whom you should compare yourself is you yesterday. And it doesn't matter how much time you spend on the problem if it moves you forward.
Not having a plan
My next point about having a plan. I think literally 99% beginners don't have a plan of learning for the next year. Which makes it extremely difficult to achieve your goals (because you didn't specify and), to see your progress or next steps.
For example I'm a complete beginner and I don't know anything about programming. So I would look for some video or article which describes what I need to learn how example to become a Javascript developer. Actually I already made video about that. After this you literally get a list of technologies that you need to learn and then you need to expand each of them.
Of course you can adjust you plan when you are learning new things but the core steps will stay the same. I would never learn something new without clear goals, steps and a plan.
Only watching tutorials instead of writing code
One more important thing is to start coding as soon as possible. And I see lots of people who want to learn something but they just continue to watch tutorials and not write code. And watching tutorials is completely fine and it's the fastest way to learn something but it doesn't mean that after watching them you can code efficiently in framework or language. It's even worse if you think that you can do it just because you watched some course. Then at the moment when you start to write code hundreds of questions and errors pop up in your head. This is why I always recommend after getting enough knowledge from tutorials start coding your own project because in this case you will really learn to use something.
Bonus: Writing code without planning + Planning to much
And here is my bonus tip. And actually it's not only for beginners but for all developers. They want to start writing code as soon as possible. They don't think enough about implementation, possible problems and scalability. This is completely fine as a beginner but you must train yourself to think solve problems in your head and it comes only by thinking about them a lot. So even at the beginning try to look on the task or problem from all sides before writing code. Ask yourself "Is it the correct way to do it?", "What if this and that happened".
And this is extremely important. A lot of people are thinking only in happy path or building application. But your code will be more stable and scalable if you go with pessimistic approach. "What will happen if people call my function not correct?", "What if the value doesn't exist?".
I highly recommend to spend more time for planning your features than for coding them.
So this were my 5 biggest mistakes that I see in beginner programmers.
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