Every programmer is self-taught

There are many ways to become a programmer beside getting a computer science degree. If you’re on that less conventional path, you may be wondering what you should do to catch up to people who do have a degree. How can you compete with someone who spent many years in a…

Embrace the power of teaching to learn better

You’re learning a new programming paradigm, trying to understand functional programming and JavaScript. It’s going well and you’re completing tutorials and courses with ease but something is missing. Somehow, you’re having trouble making things stick…

To learn, you must ship your code

When working on a project, the temptation is strong to make everything perfect before showing it to the world, or even just to your co-workers. You know each and every line of code you wrote, but you have a long list of bugs to fix and don’t want to expose your work…

Simple code is beautiful

Despite the large number of languages and tools that will get thrown at you if you mention web development (Ruby! React! Node.js! AngularJS! Gulp! Python!), the simplest web application you can create includes HTML, CSS and a bit of JavaScript for the interactivity. You don’t even…

Year-long goals are too long

With the new year, everything you wish to improve about your life and your skills come back to the surface. Everybody is making lists and sharing them online, so it’s hard not to join in the fun even if you don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions.

Controlling your novelty-seeking behavior

Getting started with a new technology is always exciting. You see all the things that it does right, unlike your current tools. The tutorial is fun, you have new toys to play with and you’re looking forward to cracking open that book or course. The first…

Working one day at a time

Magic happens when you start working toward a goal every day.

I started blogging a year and a half ago. For the first year, I only wrote technical articles that involved little to no emotion. My writing habit was occasional at best, and those posts took…

Take a break, go out and play

There is so much to learn and so many cool things I can make as a software developer that I can stay on my computer all day without getting bored. It gets a bit hard to concentrate after a few hours, but nothing that a cup of coffee can’t fix. If I feel stir-crazy, I can…