'Ready To Code' Projects: A Trick To Practice Coding Daily

What's the point of this post?

If you're a Programmer and want to get better at coding, the only way is to put in the hours and write (and read) code regularly. You want to get into the habit of pushing code, atleast 4-5 times a week, if not daily and that'll help you keep levelling up. However, this is not so easy to do unless you have projects that are in a 'ready to code' state.

One of the challenges that I've noticed myself (and many of my developer friends) having is not knowing what to work on. For this, you should create atleast a dozen toy / side projects that are fun to work on and then bring them into a 'ready to code' state. From there, you can incrementally develop the projects and keep upskilling yourself in the process.

What do I mean by 'ready to code' projects?

'Ready to code' projects are projects that are already setup and running and have some issues that you can immediately work on. The issues typically range from easy / medium (few minutes to hours of work) to difficult (few days of work). While it's good to have the issues documented in advance, it's also good to spend time setting up project issues for projects you might have developed or open source projects. If not, you atleast know what state the project currently is in, and what needs to be done.

How does this help?

The idea is to quickly fire up your IDE, make changes, and start pushing commits with little to no resistance. When you need to setup, have complex onboarding steps, or need to do a fair amount of work to get your local server running, it's difficult to focus on the changes that need to be made. 'Ready to code' projects are projects where you can directly start writing code.

It helps you;

• Dissolve that resistance to coding by letting you make changes easily.
• Let's you practice your skills by writing code and solving problems.
• Teaches you prioritisation skills.
• Helps with learning new technologies.
• Forces you to plan out your projects and their scope in advance.

Why should I code daily though?

While I'm guilty of not writing code daily, I've managed to push some code almost everyday in the past month or so. This has helped me stay in touch with my implementation and software design skills, and has helped me level up quickly.

While you might be writing code at work daily, it's important to work on side projects where you have full say of "how to do things" in the project. It's not related to coding daily, but having a full say in how things are done can help some developers in staying motivated to work on a project regularly. This assists the necessity to write code daily and keeps you in check. Try it out and see the results for yourself.

How do I develop the habit of pushing code daily?

• Set up some time everyday to push atleast 5 commits on a 'ready to code' project. This could either be before work, just after waking up, after work, or before sleeping.
• Start with easy tasks — logging changes, adding an endpoint, creating data models, integrating an API, or something else. Get it done, get the dopamine boost, move on to the next task and keep repeating till you run out of time or get bored.
• Pick one task which overflows to the next day. This creates a sense of continuation which you can capitalize upon, to stay motivated.
• If you don't know what to work on, pick up any project and start creating GitHub issues or add pending tasks to a Trello board. This is good because it makes you think like a PM which is a good skill for any Product Engineer to have.
• If you don't have projects in a 'ready to code' state, start building something. It's okay to end up with a ton of incomplete projects because completing them becomes the next task. Make sure you setup the codebase, install dependencies, and have all the resources in place to bring them to a 'ready to code' state.

Give this a try and let me know whether it works for you. This approach has worked pretty well for me and I'm optimistic that if you follow all the instructions in this article, it will work well for you too!

— Aditya Patange (AdiPat) ??

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