4 Things to Avoid When You Start Programming

Have you started learning programming? Or perhaps you are planning to become a web developer? There’s a bunch of challenges ahead, long hours spent over the code, bugs and debugging. Probably you have a lot of questions: How to start? What should one do to make the learning process easier? How to learn effectively to find the first IT job quickly?

The best people to address your doubts are experienced developers who have been working in the IT industry for a long time. Therefore, we asked our Mentors what mistakes should you avoid as a beginner.

They identified four most common situations and told us how to make habits to avoid them.

1. Learning completely on your own

A few years ago there were no such ways of learning programming as there are now. Computer science was taught on a very basic level, there were no experienced programmers eager to share their knowledge, and the only IT specialist you had access to were the guys who assembled personal computers. There was no one to learn practical coding from, so all aspiring developers had to learn on their own. - Ten years ago we lived in a crazy world of no good documentation and no good programing practices. - says Krzysztof Safjanowski, Full-stack JavaScript Developer.

The best way to learn programming is to have someone more experienced to share their knowledge and show all the good practices - in other words, you should learn from the best. Kodilla Mentors are self-taught veterans of the wild IT days; looking back, they highlight the role of a teacher during the learning process. According to Paweł Schmidt, Full-stack/Mobile Developer, lack of mentoring is what holds you back the most. Tomasz Wikło, Front-end Developer confirms: I had no Mentor to help me develop my skills. I studied poor-quality materials and it took me a lot of time to move forward and become a professional programmer. I self-learned for more than 10 years while I could have achieved the same results way much faster.

2. Waiting for someone to provide a solution

However, co-operating with a Mentor and other programmes is not waiting for ready-to-use solutions. Mateusz Jabłoński, Front-end Developer, points out the biggest mistake he used to make at the very beginning: asking for a solution before even trying to find the answer on his own.

You need to be self-contained at your work as a programmer, as no one will lead you by the hand. However, you also need to have some humility and ask practical questions whenever you can. Mariusz Pepliński, Front-end Developer says that when learning programming, you can’t rely on yourself only, because you’ll be making the same mistakes over and over again, solidifying bad habits. And what you should definitely learn from the very beginning are good coding habits. That’s why you should take a helping hand and ask for your Mentor’s advice to build a solid foundation for your future work.

3. Learning everything at once

It’s very hard to decide on your future. Choosing to be a programmer is just the first step. The next one should be choosing the technology. Paweł Furman, Front-end Developer, says that it’s very important to plan your career path.

- At the beginning I was learning “everything at once”, which has both the bright and dark side. However, from a time perspective I need to admit that the process could have been more efficient with the right organization.

Jakub Binda, Front-end Developer, who has been working on web and mobile apps for three years had the same problem - My biggest mistake was that I wanted to learn all technologies at once. As you may guess, it soon turned out to be impossible and I lost the enthusiasm for some time. Fortunately, I could count on more experienced colleagues who showed me the right way. That’s why I became a Mentor: I want to help juniors take their first steps in the front-end field.

And Piotr Maj, Software Engineer/Technical Team Leader, stresses that you should choose the direction fairly early on your path; this decision should not be put off.

4. Throwing yourself in the deep end without knowing the basics

Finally, if you’re just starting, don’t try to program spaceship robots. Learn the basics and get to know more complex issues step by step - after all, Rome was not built in a day ;)

The biggest mistake I made more than once was to assume too early that I had already understood the whole material. Very often, right after reading a new information, I tried to put it into practice without analyzing it first. Sometimes I didn’t even read an instruction to the end and started to code right away, and then I was like, “Wait a minute, it doesn’t work the way I thought it should”. Another huge mistake was trying to build complex software right away. I eventually understood that it’s better to start small and practice on easier tasks, so that more difficult ones don’t overwhelm you - explains Paweł Zagrobelny, Freelance Web Developer, who creates complex web apps with Angular and Vue frameworks.