5 HUGE Tips For New Programmers

[Music] yo yo what is going on everybody uh it's been a minute but we're back at it with a hot video topic for you today and that is advice for new programmers so i've got five pieces of honestly just great fantastic incredible advice that i want to share with you all today but before we dive into this video first i've got to give a huge shout out to today's video sponsor skillshare skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creators explore new skills deepen existing passions and get lost in creativity skillshare is awesome because as all kinds of great classes from productivity to tips for freelancers and even courses on web development one great thing about skillshare is that most classes are under 60 minutes with short lessons to fit any schedule now a class that i've been taking on skillshare is color correct and color grade like a pro by jordy vandyput so i can learn how to make my videos really pop with color skillshare is curated specifically for learning meaning there are no ads and they're always launching new premium classes so you can stay focused and follow wherever your creativity takes you the first thousand of my subscribers to click the link in the description will get a free trial of the premium membership so you can explore your creativity thank you so much to skillshare for sponsoring this video alright so honestly who am i to give advice to new programmers and that's a good point this advice actually comes from you guys so a few months ago i put out a question on my community tab asking what is your biggest piece of advice for programmers old or new and you guys had some terrific responses so i picked out my top five favorite that i want to share today and kind of give my insight for each one of these pieces of advice so let's go ahead and jump right into it so the first piece of advice comes from a user named pekko and they said learning by doing will get you far and honestly i can't agree more at this i think at some point consuming content just becomes counter-intuitive now i never really struggled with this but there's this idea of tutorial hell i think that's such a stupid name but whatever basically it's this perpetuating loop where no matter how much content you consume you never feel like you're ready to break that loop and start working on your own projects so here's the thing uh when first writing code you're not doing rocket science at least you're not doing rocket science at first you're probably starting with like a website with a mobile app with game dev or maybe some like desktop application so you really shouldn't be scared to start working on your own projects and failing i guess because failure and and coming across bugs and issues and getting stuck is the best way to kind of really hammer idea and concepts in your mind so yeah consuming content is good but at some point you gotta break from that and just dive into your own projects when i learn something new i try to inform myself i guess with the bare minimum to get my project started and i maybe dive into some basic concepts but that's it i inform myself with the bare minimum and i started working on my own idea if you watched my most recent video learning react native in five days i kind of demonstrate that i learned the basics of react native and then i instantly just dived into making my own project so that's what works for me that's how i learn the best so i cannot agree with this idea more learning by doing will definitely get you far here's another comment which was pretty popular and that is if you think about quitting because it's overwhelming don't we've all been there and if you continue learning you will definitely make it and this comes from edraq and yeah we've all been there i have a video where i talk about this idea of the dunning-kruger effect in relation to programming where when you first start out you feel like you're learning a lot and then you kind of hit this peak and you plateau and to this really overwhelming state where you realize the more you learn the more you just don't know about uh programming and the coding world and yeah it's easy to get overwhelmed and sometimes give up when you realize how far you have to go but if you can withstand this initial uh oh phase you'll be fine in the long term because to be honest this uh this feeling of being overwhelmed by having to learn so much it's gonna happen again even still at times in my career i get overwhelmed but it's just part of the game uh you learn to push through it and at some level you become numb to new challenges when i was brand new to my coding career i i used to get really stressed out that i wasn't going to be able to finish a task or a feature or a work ticket that was assigned to me but the thing is you always do and even if you don't there's somebody on the internet that has all right so the next uh tip is from a react nerd and this was one of my favorites it is try your best not to guess to make it work but take the time to understand it it will save you time later on and i totally agree with this idea i think this was maybe one of my biggest downfalls when first learning how to code i was kind of on a copy and paste spree when i realized i could just google for my problem and somewhere on the internet there was a solution being a programmer in 2021 is basically like being an internet detective you google for your problem if it's not on stack overflow if it's not in a github ticket if it's not on like a medium article it is somewhere in some dark corner of the internet anyways that was a bit of a tangent but yeah uh when i first started coding when i first started learning it i would i would google for my problem and i would occasionally come across the solution and i i would copy it i would paste it into my program change a few variables and it worked and i wouldn't take the time the necessary time to really dive through each line of code to understand what it was doing i've briefly talked about this in previous videos but when learning how to code you really need to take the time and make sure you understand everything that is going on slow down there's no rush read through the code make sure you understand exactly what's happening and yeah this might come with a balance sometimes especially when you're first starting out you'll be reading through some code blocks and just some stuff won't make sense but at some point in the future it will click probably at the worst possible time at like 3am you'll have that aha moment but it's gonna happen all right so the next point here is don't stay stuck on the basics for too long learn the fundamentals oop gain competency and then move on to the next thing also research the jobs in your area you might pick up a stack that just doesn't work for your area of the world so in regards to not getting stuck on the basics for too long i personally think you should really nail down the basics and fundamentals but their second point is the one that i really like which is research jobs in your area you might pick a stack that just doesn't work for your area of the world and i really like this piece of advice because if you're just getting into programming and you're still unsure of what language you should learn or what tech stack you should pick up research the jobs in your area and kind of just work off of that a lot of new programmers are unsure of where to start it's like the question that i probably get asked the most it's like what language should i learn what text sex should i learn i've said it before uh but your first tech stack definitely won't be your last but figuring out what's popular in your area this is a great place to start and for the last tip and i kind of saved this one for last because uh honestly this piece of advice can be applied to not only coding but any avenue of your life and it comes from ar technology and they say do daily exercise eat healthy learn every day health is very important now i can fully attest the idea of like taking care of my physical well-being uh working out eating moderately healthy has translated into me uh just being a better death to be honest and the reason for that is when i take care of myself when i go to the gym when i eat healthy when i am properly rested i feel like i am so much better at my job i feel like i'm able to pick up on concepts easier i'm able to learn quicker and i just have more energy throughout the day and burnout is so popular in tech it is so important to put your physical well-being and your mental health before code or anything else and i know i said that was my last but i have a bonus for you guys which is from alvin the first two points are great uh but the third one give a man a program you'll frustrate him for a day teach amanda program you'll frustrate him for a lifetime when i first read that i kind of laughed uh it was more of like a i blew air out of my nose kind of laugh like a right i've never heard that one before but as a programming joke that's a solid 5 out of 10 and you can't really get higher than that with programming jokes anyways thank you all for your responses we had some solid pieces of advice let me know if you have any more pieces of advice you want to share in the comments below thank you so much for sticking around this long if you did make sure you drop a like make sure you subscribe to the channel and i'll see you guys in the next one peace [Music]

Channel: Kenny Gunderman

Views: 31,290

Rating: 4.9634371 out of 5

Keywords: learn to code, programming, new programmer, coding, software engineer, software development, programming tips, javascript, engineering, coder, software, kenny gunderman

Id: r-Von8nlupQ

Length: 9min 32sec (572 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021