Coding is fun and a great way to get your creativity flowing. Here are the five most important things I have learned while writing a code. These views are subjective but I do hope that you can learn from them.
1. Coding is nothing like in the movies.
Nine times out ten, you do not just casually write some really awesome code in the middle of a disaster. In real life coding is mostly about debugging – and yes it does take more time than five minutes to write something useful.
2. It is all about persistence.
To master something you have to do it many times. Coding is no different. If you want to be good on writing some code you must be persistent. Do it many times – and always repeat and rehearse what you have learned previously.
3. No code is bad code.
When you are learning even the most faulty code is a good one. If you wrote some malfunctional code and you need to debug it, then you are most likely on your way to learn something new. The best case scenario is that you will learn to do things better next time.
4. Being the jack of all trades and master of none is a horrible way to go.
You might have seen a job application or maybe you have a friend who says that you need to know HTML5, Python, C++, C, Java, Perl etc. It would certainly be fun to know all those languages, right? Well, the reality is that while you can learn to recognize all those languages I certainly doubt that you can master all of them. Instead, concentrate on one language and become a master of that and then build from there. If you would go around trying to learn dozens of languages you would just end up confusing yourself and the price would be an extensive headache at best.
5. Take a step back if needed.
Sometimes it is good to do other things if the coding is not going well. I have had many occasions where I have just gotten stuck on a somewhat trivial issue. After not looking the code for awhile I have usually had the solution as a mental pop-up while doing others things that I enjoy.
And yes, Techtimejourney is still very much alive and active. I have had an extended hiatus from the website because I have followed my own advice number 5. The result of the previous is that the future release of PostX 0.4 Gnu/Linux will have some new fun features in it.