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What are some things you wish you knew when you started programming?

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11–20 of 102 posts

Re: What are some things you wish you knew when you started programming?

#11
I think that 5. and 10. are not as good advice as they sound. Not many people are good teachers and if you try to learn with other, they will oftentimes attempt to do all the work, especially thinking part, for you. If they already know more, there is no way for you to match their speed and you end up just doing what they dictate - worst possible way to learn. If you want to become good, you need to spend time learning alone, when you can try out wrong path for a few minutes, solve problems independently even if it is slower, make mistakes and finding out by yourself.

It is different if people around you have good social skills on top of tech skills, but many people are not like that. A contact with community is important for motivation and having possibility to work with good quality people is indispensable. However, much of important learning happens when they are not in the room and they can not take control of keyboard and tell you solutions to problems before you had the chance to think.

Re: What are some things you wish you knew when you started programming?

#14
Since I see no mention on wages (maybe OT) I will chime in:

Value your work, even if you think you are "still learning". I spent way too much time on under-market salaries writing good code. I wish someone had told me I could be earning 5x whilst still at uni.

Re: What are some things you wish you knew when you started programming?

#15
Seek out well written projects and contribute to them, you'll learn far faster the principles of good software than working alone or on badly written code.

Focus on maintainability above speed, terseness, or perfection. Worse is better (Your plans/thoughts on any matter are strictly inferior to your thinking after putting it into practice, so do not plan too much. Instead, experiment.

Re: What are some things you wish you knew when you started programming?

#18
Write 5 tests for a piece of code that you think is working but has no tests. You will find at least 1 bug every time.

Staying at work longer won't help you produce more and better code. Sleep and exercise will.

People who get angry about technical choices like what framework to use or what coding style or how tightly to enforce rules will flame out. Don't be that person.

If you think you need to rewrite it from scratch, think again. Look up Chesterton's Fence.

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