Practices that helped me as a beginner developer
At the beginning of my journey of becoming a developer, I searched for different approaches to learning. After speaking with friends and colleagues, reading articles, and watching youtube videos, I gathered a few underrated and still great practices I implemented to become more confident and better as a programmer.
Reading documentation
When you start learning to code, whether through Udemy courses, Bootcamp, or university, it’s essential to read, in particular, to read the documentation. I know that it’s way easy to open StackOverflow, but sometimes, your problem can be so specific that only the documentation can help you. Yes, maybe it won’t give you the exact solution, but it will help you find the concept you are probably missing or not familiar with. This way, eventually, you will not only come to a solution to your problem but also expand your knowledge and fill your gaps.
Documentation is the single source of truth regarding a specific language, framework, or tool.
Writing
By writing, I don’t mean only writing code. I mean to start documenting the information you learn and the solutions you come up with. If you begin practicing programming by doing some code tasks in LeetCode or HackerRank, when you finish the job, write an explanation about the problem you encountered and how you found the solution. What you tried, what worked, and what didn’t. This will help not only you to solidify your knowledge but it can also help someone else by reading your notes, article, or post.
Writing is excellent, and typing is the fastest way to do it, but don’t forget that handwriting forces your brain to engage mentally with the information.
Teaching
When you go deeper and deeper into the material and in programming in general, and you feel somehow confident in it, share the knowledge with someone else who is just starting. It’s one thing doing it and another thing explaining it. And as a developer, you will undoubtedly come to a situation where you have to explain some problem, thought, or suggestion to someone else. Teaching will help you with that skill to put your thoughts out loud.
This is also called the protégé effect - a psychological phenomenon where teaching, pretending to teach, or preparing to teach information to others helps a person learn that information.
Speaking
Speaking with others in the field is a crucial part of the process. Maybe unrelated to deep learning. Although it can help you learn new things, the main point is building connections with people in the field. Those people can become your mentors, future colleagues, or even friends. Being part of the community is essential when aiming to become a developer. You can only gain from that in every aspect.
As I said above, putting your thoughts out loud differs from writing theory or code. You should carefully choose your words and keep your mind calm. So speaking with others will help you with that as well. Also, speaking and teaching can be good preparation for an interview.