10 Tips for Success When You‘re Learning to Code
Learning to code is an increasingly popular pursuit, with good reason. From web development to data science to software engineering, coding skills open up a wide range of well-paid and in-demand career paths. But the journey to becoming a proficient programmer is not without its challenges. As a full-stack developer who has both taught myself and mentored others, I‘ve seen firsthand the common pitfalls that can trip up aspiring coders. In this article, I‘ll share 10 invaluable tips to help you learn to code more effectively, stay motivated, and ultimately achieve your goals.
1. Embrace the struggle
When you‘re grappling with a tough coding concept or trying to squash a bug that just won‘t cooperate, it‘s easy to get frustrated and start doubting your abilities. But here‘s the thing: that struggle is not only normal, it‘s actually necessary for deep learning. Researchers Elizabeth and Robert Bjork coined the term "desirable difficulties" to describe the phenomenon where making learning harder improves long-term retention and skill acquisition.
In other words, when you‘re struggling with a coding problem, your brain is forming new neural connections and encoding the information more deeply. The key is to interpret this struggle as a sign of growth, not a sign that you‘re not cut out for coding. Embrace the challenges, and even seek them out intentionally. Aim to practice at the edge of your abilities, not just in your comfort zone. With time and persistence, concepts that once made your head spin will click into place. Trust the process.
2. Build a consistent practice habit
Coding is a skill, and like any skill, it‘s honed through consistent practice. One of the biggest predictors of success in learning to code is building a regular habit. Commit to coding a little bit every day, even if it‘s just for 30 minutes. This is far more effective than irregular marathon sessions.
Why is consistency so powerful? For one, it keeps the concepts fresh in your mind. When you code daily, you spend less time relearning what you‘ve forgotten and more time making forward progress. Consistent practice also helps you push through motivation dips. You won‘t always feel like coding, but if you‘ve established it as a non-negotiable habit, you‘ll show up anyway.
To make the habit stick, link your coding practice to an existing daily routine, like your morning coffee or your evening wind-down time. Set a reminder, block off the time in your calendar, and treat it as an important appointment with yourself. Over time, the practice will become automatic, and you‘ll make progress faster than you ever thought possible.
3. Focus on the fundamentals
It‘s tempting to jump straight into building flashy projects with the latest trendy framework. But if you haven‘t taken the time to wrap your head around coding fundamentals, you‘ll likely struggle to make your projects work or understand what you‘re doing when you copy-paste code from a tutorial.
So what are these fundamentals? They include things like:
- Basic programming concepts (variables, data types, control flow, functions, etc.)
- Object-oriented programming principles
- Data structures and algorithms
- Design patterns
- Web development basics (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, HTTP)
If you‘re wondering whether it‘s worth investing time in these core concepts when you could be building projects for your portfolio, consider this: in a 2022 Stack Overflow survey, 54% of hiring managers said they consider strong foundational programming skills to be one of the most important factors when evaluating candidates. Skimping on the fundamentals might help you make flashy projects faster in the short term, but it will limit your long-term career growth.
4. Break down projects into bite-sized chunks
One common pitfall I see aspiring coders make is trying to take on projects that are way too ambitious for their current skill level. They dream up a complex app idea, dive in head-first, and quickly get overwhelmed and discouraged when they can‘t make it work.
The solution is to break projects down into the smallest possible chunks. This could mean starting with just one feature of your dream app, or building a very basic prototype before adding more advanced functionality. By tackling bite-sized pieces one at a time, you make the project feel manageable and rack up small wins that keep your motivation high.
Let‘s say you want to build a full-stack web app with user authentication, a database, and an interactive front-end. Instead of trying to build the whole thing at once, you could break it down like this:
- Build a simple static HTML/CSS page
- Add client-side interactivity with JavaScript
- Create a basic Express server
- Connect the front-end and back-end
- Add a MongoDB database
- Implement user authentication
- Add more advanced features
By taking it step-by-step, you give yourself a chance to practice each skill in isolation before integrating them. You also get the motivating sense of accomplishment from completing each small milestone.
5. Quality > quantity
When you‘re eager to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible, it‘s tempting to race through tutorials and courses and build tons of projects to pad your portfolio. But here‘s the thing: if you don‘t take the time to truly understand the concepts and tools you‘re using, that knowledge will be fragile.
It‘s much more valuable to aim for a deep understanding of a few key topics than to have shallow familiarity with a ton of different languages and frameworks. Focus on really internalizing core concepts, and strive to write clean, well-documented, efficient code, even if it means building fewer projects overall.
Practically, this might look like:
- Studying code line by line to understand exactly what it‘s doing, rather than copy-pasting
- Stepping through code with a debugger to follow the flow of execution
- Refactoring your code to make it more readable and modular
- Writing unit tests to verify your code works as expected
- Optimizing your code‘s time and space complexity
- Documenting your code with clear comments
Taking the time to hone your craft and really understand what you‘re building will pay dividends in your future career. Employers can smell "tutorial code" from a mile away. They‘re much more impressed by a candidate who can display genuine understanding and write high-quality code.
6. Build your own projects
Tutorials and courses are great for getting started with a new language or tool. But at some point, you need to take the training wheels off and start building your own projects from scratch. This is where the real learning happens.
When you work on your own projects, you encounter problems you won‘t see in tutorials. You‘re forced to plan out the architecture, design the UI, hook everything up, and fix any bugs, all without step-by-step instructions. This is invaluable practice for real-world development.
Your project ideas don‘t have to be groundbreaking. The key is that they‘re interesting enough to keep you motivated, and challenging enough to push you out of your comfort zone. Some ideas:
- A web scraper that collects data from your favorite websites
- A Chrome extension that modifies or enhances a website
- A mobile app that gamifies a habit you‘re trying to build
- A data visualization of an interesting dataset
- A clone of a simple website or app (e.g. a basic Twitter clone)
As you build more projects, make an effort to incorporate new tools and techniques you want to learn. Aim to build a portfolio that showcases a variety of skills – front-end, back-end, databases, APIs, deployment, etc. And don‘t forget to show your projects to other people for feedback!
7. Teach what you learn
One of the best ways to solidify your understanding of a concept is to explain it to someone else. This might seem counterintuitive – how can you teach something if you‘re still learning it yourself? But that‘s precisely the point.
When you try to break a concept down and explain it clearly to a beginner, any gaps or fuzzy areas in your own understanding will quickly become apparent. You‘re forced to confront the limits of your knowledge and figure out how to fill those gaps.
There are many ways you can practice teaching as a learning tool:
- Write a blog post or tutorial explaining a concept you recently learned
- Give a talk or presentation on a coding topic to your local meetup group
- Pair program with another aspiring coder and take turns explaining concepts
- Answer questions on forums like Stack Overflow or Reddit‘s r/learnprogramming
- Volunteer to mentor or tutor a beginner coder
Not only will teaching help you learn the material more deeply, it‘s also fantastic for your resume and professional network. Demonstrating your ability to communicate complex technical concepts is a highly valuable skill in the tech industry.
8. Find a community
Learning to code can be a lonely journey, especially if you‘re teaching yourself online. But trying to go it alone often leads to burnout and stagnation. We‘re social creatures, and we learn best in supportive communities.
Surrounding yourself with other people who are learning and passionate about coding can be a game-changer for your motivation and growth. You‘ll have people to bounce ideas off of, get feedback on your projects, vent about bugs to, and celebrate wins with.
If you‘re learning online, join communities like:
- freeCodeCamp‘s forum and chat rooms
- Codecademy‘s community forum
- The Odin Project‘s Discord server
- Social media groups for coders (e.g. Programmers Hangout on Facebook, r/learnprogramming on Reddit)
Offline, look for ways to connect with local coders:
- Attend meetups related to coding and tech
- Join a local co-working space for developers
- Take a course at a coding bootcamp or community college
- Volunteer at hackathons or coding workshops
- Find a mentor through your network or online platforms like Codementor
Building relationships in the coding community doesn‘t just make learning more fun – it can also open doors to future opportunities. Your coding friends may become future collaborators, colleagues, or even employers.
9. Embrace feedback and code review
Putting your code out there for others to critique can be nerve-wracking. What if they think your code is terrible? What if you‘re not as skilled as you thought?
But seeking out feedback and code review is one of the best things you can do to grow as a coder. It‘s only by having more experienced developers point out areas for improvement that you‘ll learn to write cleaner, more efficient, more maintainable code.
Some ways to get feedback on your code:
- Post your projects on platforms like GitHub and ask for constructive criticism
- Contribute to open source projects and learn from the code review process
- Participate in online code review communities like Code Review Stack Exchange or Dev.to
- Find a mentor who can review your code and give guidance
- Pair program with a more experienced developer and ask them to explain their thought process
Remember, the goal of code review is not to make you feel bad about your skills. It‘s to help you identify blind spots and areas for growth. Approach feedback with a growth mindset, and view it as an opportunity to learn rather than a personal attack.
Over time, you can also learn a lot by reviewing other people‘s code. You‘ll be exposed to different architectures, design patterns, and techniques that you can incorporate into your own projects. Reviewing code will make you a better programmer and collaborator.
10. Keep learning and embrace the journey
When you‘re learning to code, it‘s easy to get fixated on the end goal – landing a job, building your dream app, or reaching some other milestone. But the truth is, coding is a field where you never really stop learning. The technologies and best practices are always evolving, so being a developer means committing to continuous learning.
Instead of rushing towards some imaginary finish line, try to embrace the journey. Celebrate the small wins along the way – your first working script, your first deployed app, your first contribution to open source. Take time to explore new languages, frameworks, and tools that intrigue you, even if they‘re not directly related to your current goals. The more diverse your skill set, the more adaptable and valuable you‘ll be as a coder.
It‘s also important to have patience and go easy on yourself. Learning to code is hard, and there will be many moments of frustration and self-doubt. But every bug you fix and every concept you grasp is a sign of how far you‘ve come. Keep showing up, putting in the work, and believing in your ability to grow. With consistent effort and the right strategies, you can build a fulfilling career in this dynamic and rewarding field.
Learning to code is an exciting but challenging journey. By focusing on the fundamentals, breaking down projects, seeking to deeply understand concepts, building your own apps, teaching others, finding community support, embracing feedback, and committing to lifelong learning, you‘ll be well-equipped to succeed. Remember, every master was once a beginner. With patience and persistence, you can achieve your coding goals. Now go out there and write some amazing code!