Mentors’ Advice: 10 Most Common Mistakes Made by Kodilla’s Students
Paulina Baszak · 24.07.2018
Mentors who work with Kodilla share some of the most common mistakes made by our Students who are just embarking on their IT adventure. Their advice can be useful both for those that have just started to code as well as those more advanced in the subject.
Learning to program, at home or at Kodilla’s bootcamp, should consist of coding. Sounds like a cliché but when studying on your own it’s fairly easy to get hooked on reading and watching tutorials. It’s way harder to sit down, commit to coding and create your own projects.
Bootcamp makes it easier as the material is divided into modules, which are shared with the Students each week. Once a week you have a 1-1 call with your Mentor, which means that you know from the start exactly what to expect, what you’ll learn and what kind of tasks you’ll be working on. You can rest assured that all of them will be checked by the experienced developers. However, every beginner makes mistakes - this is exactly what our Mentors will focus on in this article.
It won’t be anything new if I tell you that the most popular mistake is the inadequate proportion between theory and practice. I have never met a person who would learn how to ride a bike from books. You need to code, anything - no matter what it is. Usually, right after finishing a theoretical part even the easiest trials of writing your own lines of code are way too difficult. It may discourage you from writing and encourages you to undertake further reading. You may think - it’s not good enough so I need to study a bit more. In reality, you just put the problem aside and run away from writing your own code, which shows our deficiencies.
Usually, our Students treat bootcamps like a school. They just want to get through it as fast as possible, solve tasks, just to pass the tests. This is not what the bootcamp is all about, dear Students. You attend the coding bootcamp for yourself, to learn something, not to just do it and get a grade.
Students don’t pay attention to details and give up too fast. Learning programming is like learning new languages. It’s not enough to hear/read something once. The most important thing is to revise systematically and practice!
Students give up really fast when they attempt to solve problems. They don’t read error messages. Instead of solving problems one by one, they want to fix them all at once.
One one hand quite a few Students are not willing to do any additional tasks. But on the other hand, some of them are two steps ahead too fast (they keep asking for more tasks, however, they’re not entirely ready). The key is to look at your possibilities objectively.
The most common mistakes are typos, not understanding callback functions or exit points of functions,, not distinguishing function parameters from global variables as well as lack of knowledge about variables range.
Usually, Students focus on the result, not necessarily on comprehending the process that leads to this result.
Lack of attention to details - usually because they miss a tiny sign like a comma, semicolon or bracket, they create bugs that are really hard to find.
What seems to be the case most of the time is that Students start with frameworks straight at the beginning. That’s a big mistake. A new version of a single framework can change their approach dramatically. For example, AngularJS and Angular 2. What’s the most important is to get to know the basics and then start learning frameworks. Try and see, it’ll make things much easier :).
Our Students get discouraged very fast. No one can be a master the day they are born. Every success requires hard work. Being tempted by the allure of working in the IT industry, they meet some difficulties when they face the reality. Suddenly, they realise they need to put a lot of effort and not everyone is willing to do this. Some of the students assume that it’s enough to pay the cash to achieve results. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of time you need to invest to gain knowledge in a very short time. You can’t do it without commitment. A negative attitude is another thing. Many Students act in a very chaotic way - “I don’t understand why, but the key is that it works”. That’s not the right path to follow. It’s better to stay behind and slow down the pace but in turn be able to explain every single line of your code, rather than complete all the tasks in one day, which can result in a code looking like a sticky mush of inane commands.
The above comments and tips are directed to our dear Students and programming beginners. When you take your first steps in coding, every single piece of advice is priceless. Especially when it comes from the experienced specialists in the field. That’s the reason why we make sure that during the coding bootcamp you have access to constant feedback about your progress.
The best way to notice your bugs and fix them is to read the code review. Your dedicated Mentor reviews the code and reports your mistakes. You fix them until all your code is approved. This way you receive an objective assessment and avoid being stuck. When learning on your own it’s very easy to overlook your own bugs. Finding them may take quite a bit of time and in turn discourage you from practising further. You may find it difficult to develop yourself simply because the same mistake can be repeated in other projects and more importantly, at your workplace.