Starting out as a developer is hardly ever a swift, smooth trip. In fact, the entire voyage from novice to pro cannot be described as swift, smooth or seamless, but somehow a lot of great guys have made it work and are kicking ass as devs, building incredible products, solving problems and saving the world one script at a time as a developer, that is just in and of itself amazing, that regardless of the bumps in the learning process, no matter how hard it gets, there is no stopping because despite, the hassle, all of it is worth it.

Being able to solve problems by building solutions with technology is at its best a refined superpower that only superhumans, metahumans, mutants and demigods possess; the sweet part about this divine ability is anyone can become a superhuman, a mutant, a meta human or a demigod” you just have to put in the hours and be committed. Let us explore a little on the dev life as a beginner in this article, here are 5 things you do not want to do if you are just starting as a developer and trying to find your feet.

1. Not making out enough time to practice

2. Just doing something without any tangible reason

3. No research culture

4. Not studying

5. Copying and pasting codes religiously

ONE

• Are you the guy or girl that is too busy to make out time to code, hardly practicing? You probably only code when you have a class task or when you happen to be watching a tutorial or are by chance around other developers. Well, I do not hate to break it to you but, that is a very sad schedule for a beginner, you want to be committed and dedicated to the process, and you want to get your hands on as many self-driven gigs as possible because, the more laid back you are, the less you know. You certainly do not want to wait until that lecturer taking you in ‘programming 101’ walks in before you check what’s going on in your Visual Studio Code, that is a habit you need to quit big time if you plan on growing as a dev.

TWO

• Learning a language simply because you heard it is cool? Or someone is in love with it and you straight up think it is wise to jump on it? Sheesh, that is not what you want to do, it is always important to start from the basics and get your foundations firm and strong enough to shoulder future stack explorations, I mean the idea of the word, ‘stack’ means you would keep ‘adding on’ right? So, imagine starting from the top and missing all the basic bottom bits, where do you stack the basics when you are forced to go through them, trust me, you will be forced to go through them and it is going to make your learning journey more difficult than it should have been at this point. You do not want to learn about some important skill just because everyone is on it, that is a valid reason though, however, it is not the only reason you want to bank your decisions on, you should do more research.

THREE

• No research culture? You are interested in a new technology? You are starting out as a developer? Do you have zero interest in knowing what is going on in your preferred niche? Or you just do not think it is important to do? Now that makes me wonder if you are suicidal or if you are a masochist. Because, that my friend, is a recipe for death or futuristic overwhelming pain. A research-less developer is like a plant with no light or water, set to die from malnourishment, you need to steadily research what updates exist, how far have you gone in your journey, what concepts you need to learn, what you want to achieve with the technologies you interact with, why that technology, why that language? You just need to have the right answers to the right questions.

FOUR

• Not studying? Sounds just like no research, another self-sabotaging habit you need to conquer, this goes beyond YouTube tutorial videos, you want to read as much material as you can to gain deeper insight, and watching videos to guide you through a process is definitely a good idea, but just like every course you take in school, after class, you always have to do some more studying of materials for deeper insight, knowledge, more experience and you know, just to cross all the Ts and dot all the Is, it is important that you read up on study resources and documentations available concerning your niche. The insight is definitely going to help you level up.

FIVE

• Copying and pasting codes? I do not know a developer who was not at some point guilty of this habit. It is so easy to just use a solution straight outta somebody’s problem-solving logic, simply because they share exactly the same problem in the first place. While this might be alright depending on the problem, you want to have exhausted all logical attempts on your end as a beginner, you want to try harder to debug your errors, try harder to think up solutions in the middle of a problem and get more comfortable navigating your own code with self-thought logic that should work, besides the more you do, the more you know. So, the less you copy and paste codes, the more you know how to write code but the more you copy and paste code, the less logic you learn to apply, thus, the less learning progress you eventually make.

That’s it on 5 things you do not want to be doing while trying to find your feet as a developer! I hope you find this read helpful to some extent, look me up for more tech-related information if you like this, you can find me on Medium and LinkedIn as Sushitechspace and Msurshima Uji respectively.

Toodles.

Yours truly,

Msurshima