3 tips to improve your skills as a budding programmer
So you’ve got yourself a position as a developer. Congratulations! You are excited, you are pumped, you are ready to get going.
You start the job, day 1 is fine, a lot of information to take on. Week 1 is gone in the blink of an eye and you realize that there is a lot (as in A LOT) that you have to learn. You spend the next month becoming more and more overwhelmed. Maybe you’re not quite ready for this job?
Fear not, you are definitely ready. After all, your company has a rigorous interview process, and they make sure they hire qualified people. So what can you do when, despite knowing this, imposter syndrome hits you hard?
Recently, CoverWallet published a blog post about our excellence interns. All of us interns started talking, and I realized we have two things in common: we are all preparing for a junior position and… we are all a little lost. Especially in the beginning.
I’ve been with CoverWallet for a month and a half now, and below you can find my top tips to improve as a beginning programmer.
- Ask questions
This might be an obvious one, but it is still the most important one.
No question is too dumb to ask. I recently published a blog post and mentioned the “GitHub chart”. One of my developer friends read the post, and then asked me what a GitHub chart is. He’s been in the industry for nearly a decade. Never assume that other people know the same things you do just because they’ve had the job longer. They might know different things to you. We are here to help each other, don’t hesitate to ask all your questions.
Don’t accept partial answers. If you don’t understand the answer, ask your interlocutor to repeat. Things like “could you rephrase that please and tell me again?” can help you along the way. Sometimes it helps to just hear things twice, so don’t be afraid to ask for a repetition of the same answer. If you don’t get the answers you are looking for, take your questions somewhere else. I recently asked about why our company wasn’t offering a certain feature. I asked five different people and all I got was “it was decided not to”. I wasn’t happy with this answer so I kept going, and I kept asking the same question. In the end, I asked the CEO and he was able to give me the reasons behind this answer.
This is nice and all that… but I don’t even know what to ask!
It is not uncommon that at the beginning of a new job you are so lost you have no idea where to start. This is where the second point comes into play.
2. Write documentation
Yes, you’ve read that correctly, it says write documentation, not read it. Reading documentation is good and something I definitely recommend but it only gets you so far. Instead, start contributing to the existing documentation. This is especially useful if you can’t find what you’re looking for, but also when you feel that an entry isn’t clear or complete.
Why is it helpful to write documentation? In the process of writing, you start structuring your thoughts and you actually see the depth of your own understanding. You don’t have to know the topic perfectly that you want to contribute to. Instead, start writing and see how far you get. Suddenly you will find a lot of questions to ask that you hadn’t thought of before — and can go back to 1.
An additional benefit of writing documentation is that you’re not only helping yourself but also helping the company and your colleagues advance. Lastly, next time you come across the same topic, you might already have forgotten some of it — how neat will it be to go back to your own written documentation to check up on the details.
3. Read (and approve) pull requests
When you first start out, you may not feel ‘good enough’ to approve other people’s code. Pull requests (PRs) are often seen as an additional duty, best left to seniors. I think you should start reading PRs from day 1 of the job, even if you’re a junior. You will learn much more than you could imagine. You will start to understand the project you’re working on better.
This doesn’t mean you should blindly approve all PRs. If you’re not sure the code is correct, please don’t click approve. But you will start to understand more code and you will start to see different ways of achieving the same problem. On GitHub, you can subscribe to issues, why not get updates for a few issues that interest you? Maybe checkout how a particularly tricky problem gets solved.
Reading other people’s codes will also lead you back to the first two points. Is there something you don’t understand? Ask your manager / mentor / best buddy. Is this something that should be documented? Get to it.
At the end of the day, a new position in programming is all about learning. It is up to you to make the most of it. Your colleagues are busy and they don’t know what you don’t know. Reach out to them and make the most of the collective knowledge!
The list above is not exhaustive, and there are more things you could do to improve your skills. I highly recommend frequent peer programming and making sure you’re working with an experienced mentor who can help you out. The most important thing I can leave you with is to keep going and to enjoy the process!
