18 March

Honing Your Craft: Tips For Novice Software Developers

If you’re new in the world of coding, you already know there’s an exciting adventure waiting ahead.  It may seem a bit overwhelming in the beginning, but find joy in knowing that there’s always going to be something new to learn.  

Motivate yourself to dig deep into the experiences of being a new developer.  You’ll probably feel frustrated and challenged at times, but know that coding and software development opens up a new world of creation and an exciting career in the tech industry.

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Here are some helpful tips to get you on your way to a long and successful career.  

Practice makes perfect

You won’t get any better at your craft without practice.  You may have a project you’re working on for whatever company you’re assisting, but keep it real with plenty of independent projects of your own.  

Watch a video to further explain the mission of a special organization centered around the value of Continuous Testing.  Making yourself better begins with a strong plan for continuous testing.  

Write code until coding is something you speak fluently.  Make a deliberate effort to step outside of your comfort zone, and dig into new things whenever you have the chance.  The more cutting edge you are with your abilities, the more valuable you are as a developer.

Patience is a virtue

You probably already know that patience is essential to the job of a developer, but when you’re new to the realm it can be discouraging to see a stagnation in your progress.  Becoming a master programmer will take you quite some time.

Go ahead and toss away the assumption that becoming competent at your job will happen overnight.  You will mess up. You will write bad codes. Think of these situations as learning opportunities, and move forward with purpose.

Embrace the challenge of errors

When you’re new to writing code, you’re going to experience a war against the bugs.  Don’t get stuck in the idea that you’re simply not capable of writing a clean code. Everyone fails when they’re learning, and those failures will teach you something new every single time.  

It’s valuable to learn to love the challenge of fixing errors and bugs.  You’ll be debugging for your whole career, so try to learn to more easily recognize recurring error messages.

Understand the why in how things work

You should never get yourself into a coding project without fully understanding exactly why every code you write works the way it works.  Curiosity will get you far in the industry, and a thorough understanding of the tools of development will serve you well.  

Try finding several different reliable resources for learning.  StackOverflow questions will give you a happy hint of knowledge, for starters.