Some tips for a novice programmer from a novice programmer

Sriram Gopal
Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read

These are some takeaways/ tips from my coding experience. Everything is based out of own experience and might not be perfect and already known to many.

1. Don’t underestimate the power of programming. During my internship, when I had to do a text pattern matching, there were moments when I had a prejudice immediately on seeing the problem, that those could not be accomplished. But once I tried with an open mind, I realized the power of regular expressions and I was left in awe. The program could find patterns that humans would never be able to envision.

2. Don’t get overwhelmed or get consumed by the output that is required

3. Follow naming conventions, meaningful names, and comment as much as possible. During the initial days, I myself could not understand what I had written a few days before

4. Maintain versions, name files appropriately. Not doing this has literally made me go crazy and redo the already done work few times

5. Start with simple operations, take small steps

6. Keep Saving at maximum possible frequency. Ctrl+S should become a part of your existence like breathing during coding

7. Use print statements as much as possible to debug the program. Print at every point in the program to see where there is a gap

8. If something does not work out, even after trying for a couple of hours, give it a break. This is one tip which has served me well several several times. Sometimes you crack certain difficulties within moments after a change of thought

9. A good programmer now a days has to be a person who is good at searching online. Most of the simple tasks that we require are available because someone has already been in that situation before. Being smart is fine. It’s also about aggregating from different sources, different parts of the large program

10. StackOverflow is personally the place to go for most of my clarifications. It has solutions in most cases as well as beautifully crafted explanations

11. Seek help from friends, colleagues. There are occasions when one of our known people would have already come across a similar use case, who can give us a good starting point

12. Research, Search, Read in connected loops. While reading about a concept/issue, also see about the related issues/concepts which might come in handy at later point for us or would be of help to someone else. I was fortunate enough to code only in R and Python for which the support, documentation and online resources were fantastic

It might be a long way before we get our objective done.

But THAT FEELING of completing the code with the expected functionalities is unparalleled and unrivalled!!!

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade