Becoming a master programmer: Ask for help
Becoming a master programmer is a journey and a difficult one at that. You don’t have to go through it alone, at least not the entire journey. There is this saying:
“If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together.”
So, learn to ask for help. A lot of what you do as a programmer is learning, learning new skills, learning new updates, and you might be working on projects where you don’t fully understand an integral skill to make it work. Other times you don’t have the skill at all because it’s in a totally different niche.
Asking for help doesn’t have to be technical, sometimes all you need is a good piece of advice. But you have to ask, people don’t magically know what you are going through, you have to communicate it in a way they understand so they can help you.
The help you ask for can come in two ways, either a community which is usually online or people around you either physically or on social media.
Online communities
Most of the technologies you would use in your career as a programmer, if not all, have been used by someone else, someone who understands it more than you. That person may be on the far end of the globe, but what connects you is the internet. This is where online communities come into play, there are a lot of platforms that bring together users of programming languages and frameworks to share ideas and problems.
Find an online community that suits you and ask for help, be very specific about your problem so people can offer the right help. There are tech forums that connect techies of all sorts and kinds, you can take advantage of those also.
People around you
Depending on where you are, you can either have a lot of people that share the same passion for programming as you or there might be very few of them. These people are also on their own journey and have their own experiences.
Don’t underestimate anyone, share problems with them. You might be surprised at the kind of help you’ll get from your peers.
A better option is to have people who are superior to you, this can be a boss, a mentor or a teacher. Meet them and be open about your problem. Most unfinished projects are as a result of small problems that seemed large to you. Just ask for help.
Return the favor
Just as people have helped you, I would advise you to always be ready to help others. Regardless of what level you are in, you have more experience than others and they would benefit from what you know.
Even if you started yesterday, someone is starting today, those 24 hours can make a difference in their lives. So never underestimate your knowledge and experience. Let’s help each other grow.
Happy Coding!!!
