Mistakes To Avoid When You're Learning To Code [Self-Taught Programmers and Web Developers]

hey this is my channel and I talk about code and stuff in this video I'm gonna talk about the mistakes I made when I was teaching myself how to code and how you can avoid making those same mistakes in order for you to learn how to code faster and get a job sooner as a self-taught program I'm Dorian and this is my channel where I talk about my experience and being a self-taught programmer and how I taught myself how to code make sure to smash that like button and subscribe alright let's get right to it here are the mistakes that I would avoid making if I had to teach myself how to code all over again okay so the first mistake that I would avoid making if I had to teach myself at code again would be to not jump around between programming languages so often early on when I was first teaching myself how to code it seemed that every time something would get difficult I'd feel that I was an understanding of the language and then I would start kind of looking into another language I did this first back-end language that I started learning was Ruby after I completed the Ruby course I kind of went back and focused on HTML and CSS because I felt like I need eyes that are understanding of that after that I went over to PHP and I did PHP for a little while and after PHP I did mess around with JavaScript and jQuery but then I digressed again and went back to another language and started messing around with Java at one point I was even trying to learn Haskell because I had gotten a coding challenge for a job that was in Haskell and I spent about three weeks trying to learn the Haskell syntax and functional programming just to try to well complete a coding challenge which I never completed i-i-i was unable to because i was too new and i couldn't grasp the concepts and i couldn't even complete fizzbuzz on the coding challenge pick one programming language and stick with it until you have a good grasp of basic programming concepts understand what an if-else statement is understand what a for-loop is what a while loop is just get a good understanding of basic things that your be doing in programming often and once you understand that in one language a lot of that stuff transfers over into different languages so you don't have to get too hung up on syntax just kind of understand what you're trying to do and learn the concepts and don't switch languages too much early on also another good tip that coincides with this is try to stay away from very verbose programming languages when you're first starting out and try to stick with something simple like JavaScript or Python is usually what I would recommend for someone who's just learning how to program and try to stay away from you know Java or C++ but just a lot more difficult to write and read because you have to write so much boilerplate and that kind of that kind of takes away from the basic concepts that you're trying to learn when you're first starting out and it's a lot easier to get in and easily write a few lines of code without a bunch of extra boilerplate to get you up and running and see results quicker and be able to learn faster a mistake that I would make when I was first learning how to code and I would I would occasionally continue to do it sometimes was I would get too hung up on theory and I wouldn't focus so much on practice and although learning a lot of theory is good when you're first starting out it's better to kind of just get in there and get your hands dirty and start writing some code rather than watching a bunch of videos follow along with a bunch of you know Coursera courses or EDX courses or buying a bunch of udemy courses or doing a bunch of different tutorials or YouTube tutorials learn the basics and then once you got the basics just kind of work on building your own stuff because honestly that's where a lot of your learning is gonna happen if you don't start writing your own code and you don't start you know getting into your own problems you're not gonna learn how to solve problems this job is all about figuring out problems and code is secondary code is just a tool that we use to solution eyes those problems and that's what your job is gonna be so make sure that when you're you know sitting down at your computer and you're ready to just crank out a bunch of code that you know what it is that you're actually gonna be doing because you'll end up finding yourself getting stuck and not really knowing what you're supposed to be doing if you haven't thought about it beforehand and you just decide to open up your text editor and start writing another mistake that I would avoid making today if I was teaching myself how to code again would be to not allow myself to get as stuck as I used to I would get hung up on trying not to Google the answer and feeling like I really had to figure out a problem on my own which would sometimes lead me to not being very productive and just getting nowhere the truth is when you're first learning there's so many things that you don't know and you're not gonna figure it out by just staring at your screen so it's okay to go and seek the answer the problem is that many of us when we're self taught and we're not going to a bootcamp or in school we don't have a lot of people that we can reach out to that would help us if you're lucky enough to have found a mentor when you were teaching yourself how to code then you can reach out to them but many times you have to turn to the Internet and a lot of beginners can find Stack Overflow a bit intimidating but the truth is what's the worst that can happen somebody tells you that this is a duplicate question or they kind of act like a jerk and although it happens the truth is it doesn't happen that often many other times you know people are very helpful and will get you the proper answer if not you can also check out you know reddit is a good place to get answers to problems you can look for discord groups and the language or framework that you're using and slack groups as well many times there's very active people on those chat groups that will help you with questions that you might have or be able to direct you where you could get an answer but just try to learn to recognize when you are getting stuck on a problem and don't allow yourself to get stuck for too long I did this many times and it's it's it ends up with you just feeling like you've wasted your day and it makes you feel like you're not getting anywhere and you don't want to feel like that when you're first learning because it can be very discouraging and could potentially make you not continue to teach yourself how to code another mistake that you should avoid making is don't strive for perfection perfection is very similar to procrastination and if you get stuck trying to make things perfect when you're first learning how to code you're gonna get hung up on small things that aren't gonna be all that important to your progress and your learning so really try not to be perfect because you're new you're gonna make a lot of mistakes and it's better to have code that works and is a little sloppy looking then trying to make code that looks pretty but doesn't work when I started my first real developer job my mentor would tell me doesn't matter if it's ugly make it work first and once you get it to work then you can make it pretty you can solution eyes your problems at its most basic and ugliest form possible my text editor looks like a mess when I'm trying to figure out a problem but I make sure when I put in a pull request that my code is nice and clean that is properly formatted that I don't have any anything that may come up with syntax issues or just sloppy written code in code review and I make sure that I submit the best possible pull request that I can but in the process of writing it I'm a JavaScript guy I'm gonna have a ton of console logs written everywhere I'm gonna have a bunch of blocks of code that are commented out I'm gonna try to figure out where stuff is I'm gonna I'm gonna be moving stuff around and it's gonna look a little messy and that's ok as long as I fixed the problem and before I submit my my code I cleaned it so don't get hung up on trying to make your code perfect and pretty just make it work fix your problems first then make your code look good so this is more of a bonus and not really a mistake one of the things that I wish I would have done early on when I was teaching myself that a code was get comfortable with my text editor and really understand how to use it and navigate through it and set up proper add-ons and tools to make development easier for me a lot of the times when people first start out they don't know how to set up their their text editor and don't know how to navigate through things don't know how to search for files don't know how to how to find the line on a page don't know how to find the file by name or by path knowing how to highlight multiple lines simple things like understanding how to do find and replace and just general navigation if you learn how to use these things sooner than later you'll be more efficient you'll be more productive and you'll really know how to use the tool that you're gonna be using most of the time the truth is you're gonna be in your text editor or your IDE whenever you're coding and really knowing how to navigate through there can be very beneficial for your progress so just make sure you know how to get the most out of your text editor or ID all right so that wraps it up for the mistakes that I would avoid making if I had to teach myself how to code all over again if you stuck around and you enjoyed this video please make sure to give it a like and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this thanks and see you next time [Music]

Channel: Dorian Develops

Views: 11,310

Rating: 4.9719954 out of 5

Keywords: self-taught, programmer, developer, software engineer, web developer, learn to code, learntocode, 100daysofcode, freecodecamp, 100 days of code, free code camp, programming

Id: 9-7FKLIXWeM

Length: 10min 15sec (615 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020