3 things to remember before starting a career in software development.
Are you thinking to become a software developer? This advice will help you to learn something faster. Practice makes a man perfect is the key to hard work and success. If you are new to programming. Learning by building projects is the go-to method for mastering the tools and technology. The more you practice, the better you get at it.
If I have to give three pieces of advice to someone who has begun their journey with software development would be:
- Learn by doing projects.
- Once you build a project by following a tutorial, redo once on your own.
- Always try to read the official documentation.
Learn by doing projects.
As I said earlier, practice makes a man perfect. The key to master new tools and technology is to always start by doing projects. Practical skills always pay you off than theoretical knowledge.
Programming and Public speaking are similar because in both cases the more you practice the better you get at it. In public speaking how well you can present depends on how much experience you have in that field. And, in programming how well you can code depends on how many projects you have done in real life. And also it determines your problem-solving skills and fluency of code writing.
Once you build a project by following a tutorial, redo once on your own.
You may ask why to do the same projects that I have already done? You may say I now know how it’s done, so why not invest time in doing some other projects. So that’s the point, let’s test how much you have learned and can do the same thing on your own. And also trying to do the same thing again will help you trigger your memory on how you have implemented certain things.
But while redoing the project, I would suggest that if you got stuck with something. Never look at the old project instead try to figure it out on your own. Go to the official documentation (I will explain this below) or searching for the solution on how you can do X thing. By finding the solution on your own, will improve your problem-solving skill. And also you will start to learn how to search for the solution by yourself.
Always try to read the official documentation.
You would say reading official documentation for beginners is difficult. And I agree with you. But remember the first key advice Learn by doing. You should practice reading the official documentation to better understand the problem.
While writing the code may be your priority is to make it work. When you do that, then ask yourself, how do these things even work? Now, this curiosity will help you to understand things better. If you search online you will find the answers to your question but sometimes you will only get little knowledge on that topic. And there is a great proverb that says Little knowledge is dangerous which, expresses that a small amount of knowledge can mislead people into thinking that they are more expert than they are. Sometimes it is good you should not master everything. But most of the time you will miss the efficient way of coding because of your little knowledge. So when you start to get familiar with the code, you should always head to the official documentation to understand it in detail. Reading official documentation will broaden your knowledge in writing a better code.
I still have many more things to learn. But I will always use this advice as my core method for learning new technology. I am not saying this is always true for everyone. People have a diverse approach to learning new things. But this way of learning has helped me a lot, and I hope it can help someone else.
At last, I want to say that never stop learning. Always try to find a better approach to learning which will boost your productivity.
