Tips for Coding for Beginners

No matter what or how you learn, however, remember these beginner tips:

1. Be patient.

At the top of this post, I said anyone can learn to code. However, that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Coding requires you to approach problems in ways you haven’t before. Certain topics may seem nonsensical to you, yet central to the language you’re learning. Problems that might seem easy at first will become far more complex to implement than you expected. You might spend hours hacking away at an assignment without seeing results.

And we can’t forget debugging. You’ll quickly learn that computers are nit-picky and will only do exactly what you tell them. Tiny typos like a missing semicolon or incorrect operator will break your entire program, and you must track down the culprit.

Even coding for beginners isn’t easy.

All of this can be uncomfortable and discouraging, and that’s okay. Do yourself a favor and progress slowly and steadily, giving yourself time to let everything soak in.

The best programmers were once where you are, and everyone has to learn the same things to start. Go easy on yourself, stick to the goals you’ve set, take breaks, and you’ll be fine.

2. Get comfortable with the fundamentals.

The early days of learning a programming language are all about the essentials. You might start by learning binary, data types, and how to print to the console. From there, you’ll explore topics like:

• Variables.
• Functions.
• Conditional logic.
• Arrays.
• Objects.

It’s essential that you fully grasp each of these concepts before advancing. This is because everything you learn in computer science builds on topics that come before.

If something doesn’t make sense, keep reviewing it until it does. And don’t assume it will make sense later in the context of future lessons. If you’re learning from a tutorial, be sure you understand what each activity is meant to teach you.

Complete all exercises to experience first-hand how each topic applies to coding. And stay patient — you can’t embark on an ambitious project until you grasp the fundamentals.

3. Write clean code from the start.

Here’s something an online course may not teach you: On top of learning how to write your code, you should also practice writing it well.

What does this mean? For any given computation, there will be more than one way to program it. You should always strive to write it in the most concise and humanly readable way that you can.

Developers usually work in teams, so others will be reading your code often. If it’s hard to decipher, fellow developers won’t look forward to working with you.

Even if you decide to freelance, writing clean code ensures you’ll understand your own code. It’s better to build the habit of clean coding now, as it will save you hours trying to decipher your work after you haven’t looked at it in months.

Why is clean code important?

You might be wondering why you need to learn clean code at this point. You’re a beginner, so shouldn’t writing functional programs be the main goal?

Well, yes. This is about establishing good habits early. If you put in the extra work now, you’ll save yourself (and others) some sanity down the road.

A good way to achieve this is by keeping your lines and your functions short. I recommend limiting each line of code to 80 characters max and each function to no more than 15 lines.

While limiting at first, these rules will train you to favor efficient code over the first idea that occurs to you.

Also, make a habit of commenting. Comments are segments of code that aren’t processed by the computer, so you can write whatever you want inside them.

Programmers use comments to clarify the purpose of their code. Learn how comments work in your language and, at the very least, leave comments at the top of your functions explaining the job of each one.

4. Search is your friend.

There’s no shame in using Google to find the solutions to your coding problems. In fact, professional developers do it all the time.

If you’re struggling, someone’s probably been in the same situation and dropped a question to a forum. You’d be surprised at how many solutions you’ll find with super-specific queries.

Plus, it’s quite satisfying to close 20 tabs of Stack Exchange after finally fixing a stubborn bug.

Our Favorite Coding Resources

Coursera

Coursera is an excellent resource in general. They have many programming and coding courses from Google, IBM, as well as various colleges and universities. You can get many paid courses through their monthly subscription, though they have free courses as well.

Coursera also offers financial aid on a per-course basis. If approved, you can get free access to the paid content. It’s worth mentioning that the access granted is only for a limited time through this method. If you don’t touch a course for several months, you will likely lose access.

Another nice thing about Coursera is that it’s treated like a classroom environment. This means you have an instructor for each course that you can ask for help, as well as other students that are currently taking the course sempolanayamtingting.id. You can also get professional certifications that can help advance or change your career.

MDN Web Docs

If you’re doing web development, MDN Web Docs is the gold standard for documentation. Everything related to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript lives here. This site belongs to the Mozilla Foundation, which you may know for their popular web browser, Firefox.

MDN Web Docs also has many tutorials ranging from complete beginners to the advanced level.

Codecademy

Codecademy is great for diving right in and writing code almost immediately. It gives you small digestible tasks to work on, as well as a sandbox to work in. They have courses for just about every language you can imagine.

Most of their content is free, though they have paid guided projects and career paths you can opt for, as well as career services and professional certifications.

The Odin Project

The Odin Project is an open-source, full-stack curriculum for web development. They have two paths, one using Ruby on Rails and the other using JavaScript (with the React framework).

The amount of information available is a bit daunting, but the best part about The Odin Project is that you will end up with many real projects to hone your skills and show off to potential employers by the end of it.

W3Schools

W3schools has a ton of tutorials that range from typical programming languages, to frameworks and other languages like SQL and HTML. They also have plenty of example code you can play with and reference during your coding adventures.

The best part is that everything is free. They do have some paid certifications, though all of the actual information about the languages is readily available.

Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is an incredibly popular and useful site for developers. People ask questions about coding and get feedback. Then, the answers are voted on to determine the best solution. Even when you’re no longer a beginner, you will likely keep returning here to find answers to various questions or issues.

The community is very active, and the public platform is free. You just need to create an account to interact with others.