When I first began coding about one year ago, I kept thinking to myself, “When I’m a developer, I will understand this concept/language/tutorial better.” Little did I know that by typing that first:"Hello, World!"and deciding to continue from there, I was already a developer. I could go on to explain what exactly a developer is but I’d rather keep this blog post about what to do and what not to in your coding journey. Coding is, after all, a journey and not a destination. I would like to keep this short and just give you a little help for how to give yourself room to be human while learning to be a developer.
1. Take Time To Be Human
Learning to code is hard. It’s really hard. It takes alot of time and energy to learn even one language. Even languages like HTML and CSS are difficult to master. Don’t even get me started on JavaScript! We often forget that while learning we still have families to care for, houses to clean and sometimes even outside jobs to work. In an ideal tech world we could spend all day and all night learning to build cool stuff but as human beings, we can’t. And that’s okay. There’s no special rule book of code telling us if we don’t spend every waking second doing something tech related we’re out. And that’s a good thing.
Make the effort to eat well and get enough sleep. Take a walk. Spend a weekend with your family. Take up a hobby that makes you feel happy. But most importantly, give yourself a break from your mind’s unreasonable expectations. Your health is more important than your schedule and even your goals. Set reasonable goals and then give yourself a little more time than that to finish your work. This isn’t a contest, it’s a lifestyle. Which brings me to my next point:
2. Ask For Help Often
When I first started going through Free Code Camp, I would spend at least an hour on a lesson that should’ve taken 5 minutes if I had just posted my problem in the forum. Find different places that can give you help for whatever you’re working on and don’t be afraid to ask. Coding is difficult and complicated. Needing help is perfectly normal.
I give myself about 15 minutes to work on a simple problem and about 1 hour on a larger problem before asking and I try to Google it first. Learn the concepts of what it is you’re actually trying to do and don’t be afraid to ask questions on code theory just to get a basic understanding. I’ve found the Free Code Camp forum to be a helpful and friendly place but you can also get a Slack account or just ask questions on Twitter.
3. Broken Code is Normal
It’s scary to see the errors come up on your CLI (Command Line Interface). But those errors are simply messages telling you what to fix.
Just imagine a detective showing up to the scene of a murder and is horrified at finding a knife with the fingerprints of the murderer. Sounds silly, right? Well, it’s the same with programming. You are the detective and the errors are the fingerprints telling you where the problem is located and what to do to fix it.
So have fun finding the bugs and eventually squashing them. Just make sure when finding the answers to those bugs on, say, Google, you understand why they’re there and what exactly you need to do to fix them.
4. Celebrate Your Successes
When you’ve squashed all (or most all) the bugs and your program is doing your really cool thing you told it to do, take time to celebrate. Share it on Twitter. Tell someone close to you. Eat some chocolate. Whatever makes you happy! I agree that we learn from our failures but there wouldn’t be any failures if we didn’t eventually get to our successes. So party on when things finally go your way! And then you can feel good enough to start building your next really cool project.
5. Give Yourself Time To Learn
“Start thinking in terms of years, not days, weeks, or even months. Computers and technology aren’t going anywhere. Slow down.” I wish someone had gotten in my face and told me this when I started. So I’m telling you now: SLOW DOWN.
Technology may be advancing quickly in some ways but consider this: JavaScript was invented in 1995 as Mocha and later LiveScript. But it never actually became popular or widely used until 2009 when it was used by Google Earth. Think about it. For fourteen years it lay practically dormant. Now it’s incredibly popular and we can barely conceive having the internet without it. Think about where you want to be in the next fourteen years. Not days. Not weeks or months. Years. You’ve learned so much already in this short amount of time. Let the concepts sink in and slow down. The internet isn’t going anywhere.
6. Work On Your Soft Skills
This is probably one of the hardest things to learn not only as a developer but as a person. People have bad days. You say something they don’t like (unintentionally), and they let you have it. Or maybe you’re the one whose had a bad day (or week) and you’ve just run out of patience. It’s really hard to be kind and respectful when you’re tired, overworked and the stress of life is just wearing you down.
The best advice I can give is to practice kindness. You may not feel it. You may want to lash out because you think it will make you feel better, but dont. Just don’t. Instead, slow down and put yourself in their position by asking a question. Ask about their family, health, or finances. Take their humanity into account, whoever they are. They’re human just like you.
I work as a server at Olive Garden. My new manager (we’ll call him Fred) was giving me a hard time because I kept attempting to take my orders down from the counter to place on the tray. It was a busy Friday night and that was his position to keep things moving. He was overly irritated at me and I could sense it. We didn’t know each and had only met briefly that week. When there was a lull in the dinner rush, I simply asked him where he was from. Fred’s face lit up as he began to tell me his story and ever after that we’ve gotten along. He even jokes around with me now.
My point is if you just take time to listen and understand, others will be more considerate as well and will jump at the chance to work with you no matter how limited you think your programming skills are. So remember to be kind to yourself and give others a little understanding because at the end of the day that’s all anyone really wants.