5 tips for begginner developers

It does not matter who you are, the technology you work with, whether you work for a big company or not, every programmer has had the experience of being a beginner without really knowing what they are doing and having that feeling of being completely lost.

If this is your moment, we are talking about one of the most important phases of your programming journey. The phase of many discoveries, learnings and even doubts.

Even though I have past for that many years ago, I remember that my beginnings weren't much different from everyone else's. In the teams I led, I noticed very similar behaviors and difficulties. Based on this, I will share below some tips that I think are important and helpful.

Take it easy on the concepts

Programming is nothing more than an abstraction of a series of logical and mathematical theories. Understanding its concepts is one of the most important steps towards becoming a programmer capable of solving big problems. This is a fact!

On the other hand, you need to be a little careful with this. I recommend that you try to limit the amount of content you study at the same time. Try to advance the theory as you put it into practice and don't waste time on too many things that are out of your current context.

At the beginning, it is very common that, every time you google somthing, you find even more doubts than before. In other words, the more you study, the more you need to study. That itself may be enough to make you feel overwhelmed.

Basically, what will tell you what you need to learn is the problems you have to solve.

Take it easy on the hype

We live in the most dynamic time in the history, specially in our industry. New technologies, frameworks and services are launched every time. Many of these “news” end up spreading very quickly, giving the impression that it is something that will take over the market and everything else will disappear.

The truth is that things don't change that quickly. The most important thing now is to complete the ongoing project with the technology you already use.

I'm not saying to not keep yourself up-to-date, or not to pay attention to what's new on the market. On the contrary, it's part of our profession to do that regularly. Just do it prudently.

Do not ignore good practices

At the beginning of my career, it was common for me to have to maintain a system and simply not understand the code I had written. The reasons were simple: functions with excessive logic and bad nomenclatures.

In fact, that's not your focus right now. The most important thing is your progress. On the other hand, well-written code will help you understand things better and, consequently, evolve. Write small functions with clear names and be careful with variables too. This will help a lot when reading your code later.

You don't need to know things by heart

At this moment, It is very common for us to worry too much about knowing exactly the correct way everything should be done and how everything works. Even how those native language functions behave.

This should definitely not be a concern. Myself, I'm always researching basic functionalities of the technologies I use because I simply don't remember them. The most important thing as a programmer at any level is knowing WHERE and HOW to find what you need.

You can also use some comments in the code to guide you, but I recommend that you do this very early on and consider abandoning this practice whenever possible. I wrote more about this subject in the post 5 thoughts on comments in code.

Listen to your more experienced mates, but be careful

One truth about my career is that I would never be at the level I am today if I hadn't worked with the professionals I did. Having people around you who know more than you is something really special.

If you have a technical leader, work the way he asks. The teachings of someone more experienced, added to your practice, will create your own way of working, which will mature over time.

Just be careful with a single opinion source. If you don't have another professional to talk, search on Google for other opinions and bring them up for discussion. There are a lot of high-ego programmers out there, trying to convince others that the way they do things is the most correct.

Furthermore, a person's opinion is, most of the time, based on their perception and experiences.

Then

Be patient and let things happen in their own time. This is definitely not a simple journey but, with the current resources, your evolution tends to take much less time than you think.

Hope this helps. See you later!