The Incorrect Way to Learn Programming
Mistakes newbies do!
When you begin to learn to program, you don’t know where to start. There are hundreds of questions in your mind and many more confusions.
You want to learn something that is employable or more importantly the technology that is hot. Beginners mostly run behind buzz words and keep switching between them so often that they don’t deepen their knowledge.
Here are a few ways that digress the beginners from learning —
It's not for me
Many beginners give up too easily. They don’t understand that it takes a lot of effort in the beginning. Learning compounds over time.
It is a continuous process, you need to code every day consistently to learn to program. It creates a habit and improves your logic.
Not focusing on the basics
Fundamentals of computer science are the building blocks of your career. CS concepts like data structures, algorithms, etc. help you not just in the initial days but throughout your career.
In the very beginning, you need to focus on the basics and do not worry about what is trending and which language to learn.
Shiny object syndrome
We all have a bit of Shiny object syndrome. This syndrome makes you focus on new and trendy things by dropping everything you are doing now. We suffer by drifting away from what is needed now to fancy buzz words.
When a beginner asks himself or others — “What to learn?”, people including himself guide him to follow a trendy buzzword. Soon, a new buzzword starts trending, and before you know he has dropped everything and is running behind the new trend.
Switch paths too often
Newbies tend to change the domain very frequently. One of the main reasons is the noise around them. This primarily happens during the academic years, when you don’t have anyone who can guide you.
There is a lot to learn and you want to learn everything. This scatters your focus. People switch from frontend to backend, backend to game development, and game development to AI/ML.
Depending too much on books and videos
Just reading books and watching tutorials will not make you a good programmer. Books and videos can show you the path, but you need to walk that path.
Newbies often buy books and courses online. They go through the whole books and courses without getting their hands dirty with coding.
Regularly coding and developing projects is much more helpful than just reading books and watching videos.
Final words
The right way to learn is to follow a path like one of these — frontend, backend, game development, mobile app development, etc. Not just follow but keep learning new technologies.
Learning by doing should be the mantra to master the art of programming.
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