The things I wish I knew when I started programming
There have been 2 nice years since I took the decision. The decision to become something more, to be what I always wanted to be and to step into a new world. It has been 2 years since I had taken the decision to be a programmer.
Now, the idea of being a ‘coder’, ‘developer’ or a ‘programmer’ has much social dogma hovering around.
There are two reasons for this :
- No one knows what it actually is
- Everyone thinks that they do know what it actually is
This indeed leads to a lot of unwanted confusion, especially considering the fact that there is a lot of conflicting ‘advice’ provided, without much context, with the clíche taglines repeated by everyone — The DRY and SOLID principles, OOP and HTML, CSS, JS being thrown around without mercy.
This is more of a problem than it first looks, with a volley of opinions and roadmaps thrown towards you, getting lost and quitting is far easier than sticking around till you learn something substantial. If you’ve seen someone bail on the idea of programming, chances are that they never learnt much.
Very few people stop programming after learning a lot of stuff ( not in theory, but real stuff ).
For me this journey has been centred about being a student, actively living the ‘school life’ and simultaneously being a self-taught developer, committed to making software, which started as my way for getting kudos and later evolved into an integral part of me, something which I identify myself with, baked right into me. It was kind of being my version of a ‘superhero’. That’s who I am now. This has been the same for a lot of developers, who started off on their own, with no ‘path’ or ‘mentor’ to look forward, with their makeshift solutions to simple problems and working their way into a niche or the other. According to what I’ve seen, most o those who start during their school years are in there to make games. That’s how I got started, and that’s how many others got started.
Regardless of whether they have a college degree or not, most people commit the very same mistakes, some of which you might be committing too.
To know more about these mistakes, check out my post on Medium:
Do leave some claps and comments if you like the advice.