Effective Ways to Become a Good Programmer
Start writIt’s time to get serious about improving your programming skills. Let’s do it!
That’s an easy career improvement goal to give oneself, but “become a kick-ass programmer” is not a simple goal. For one thing, saying, “I want to get better” assumes that you recognize what “better” looks like. Plus, too many people aim for improvement without any sense of how to get there.
So let me share ten actionable guidelines that can act as a flowchart to improving your programming skills. These tidbits of wisdom are gathered from 35 years in the computer industry, many of which were spent as a lowly grasshopper at the feet of some of the people who defined and documented it.
1. Work on Basics
As it is true for any industry and any job, the conceptual understanding is the key for success. Unless one has strong conceptual foundation, he/she can never be a good programmer. **
2. Learn techniques, not tools
Programming languages, tools, and methodologies come and go. That’s why it pays to get as much experience as you can with as many languages and frameworks as possible. Focus on the programming fundamentals, because the basics never change; pay more attention to architecture than to programming. If you feel certain that there’s only one right way to do something, it’s probably time for a reality check. Dogma can hamper your ability to learn new things, and make you slow to adapt to change.
3. Debugging skills
Creating code is only part of a programmer’s job. When software doesn’t work as expected, a programmer is expected to get to the root of the problem quickly and effectively. Instead of spending hours blindly making changes, search for a programmer who prefers to carefully investigate his code and research possible issues until an answer is found.
4. You learn more by helping others
Most of us have a common tendency of turning our heads towards forums or groups only when we need help. And again a clear separation between the good programmer and rest that the formers visit these places more often to help others. This makes them learn more then they learn getting their problem solved by someone else. Within a team as well, help others to solve their problems. Believe me, understanding others’ problem in their context, investigating on that and providing solutions; will leave you much more learned than before.
5. Read code. Read lots of code
read code concept: become a better coderYou probably expected me to lead with this advice, and indeed it’s both the most common and the most valuable suggestion for improving programming skills. What is less evident are the reasons that reading others’ code is so important.
When you read others’ code, you see how someone else solved a programming problem. But don’t treat it as literature; think of it as a lesson and a challenge. To get better, ask yourself:
How would I have written that block of code? What would you do differently, now that you’ve seen another solution?
What did I learn? How can I apply that technique to code I wrote in the past? (“I’d never have thought to use recursive descent there…”).
How would I improve this code? And if it’s an open source project where you are confident you have a better solution, do it!
Write code in the author’s style. Practicing this helps you get into the head of the person who wrote the software, which can improve your empathy.
6. Be the first to analyze and review your code
Although a bit difficult, but try to break your own code before others can and with the time you will learn to write close-to-bug-free code. Always do a close and unbiased review of your code. Also never hesitate to take others view on your code. Working with good programmers and taking their feedbacks will surely help you become a good programmer.
7. Lots of practice
This is like the way that years of practice puts you in the state where you do not have to think about each individual finger position while playing a musical instrument. Once you know what you want a piece of code to do, the code just seems to flow out of your fingertips onto the keyboard.
8. Find a Mentor
This is my personal opinion that if you find a good mentor in the beginning of your journey of coding he/she can help you with the basic and give you the right direction so you can learn coding in less time if you go without a mentor I am not saying you can't it is also possible but it might take some time.
The best way to find a coding mentor is to start by networking. Attend Meetups in your area, sign up for conferences in the tech area of your choice and make it a point to go to the networking events (there are almost always networking events at conferences).
9. Spend more time in analyzing the problem, you’ll need less time to fix it
Spend more time in understanding and analyzing the problem and designing solutions for it. You will find the rest of the things quite easily doable. Designing not always mean using modeling languages and tools, it can be as simple as looking at sky and thinking solution in your mind. Those who have habits of pressing keyboard (for coding) the moment get the problem, usually ended us something different than the requirement.
10. Be patient
No-brainer here, but it’s easy to get frustrated by your lack of progress and forget that you’re not alone.
Becoming a good programmer takes a long, long time and a lot of tedious evenings. Before you can write good code, you have to write hundreds of thousands of lines.ing here...
