With more and more businesses moving online these days, it’s becoming increasingly useful to acquire coding skills. Like any profession, one has to start from the bottom. Luckily for learning web development, there is plenty of information and tutorials available on the internet, but it’s easy to overwhelmed and put off with so much information. So, here’s some tips for when you’re first starting out.
Learn the basics first
This is probably the most important thing to do. It’s easy to get carried away while coding, so you will want to try and ground yourself and make sure you have covered the basics. It’s not a good idea to dive into building a sophisticated web application when you don’t understand what a “for” loop is. So, make sure you’ve spent adequate time learning the fundamentals before branching out into the more complicated stuff.
Learn from others
If you work in an environment where you can view other, more experienced developers’ code, then that’s great. Make sure you immerse yourself in their code and ask them as many questions as possible. You will want to strive to understand every line of code you can read. They may not have written it perfectly but as long as you’re learning it will still be beneficial. If you don’t have access to code bases where you work, then take a look at open source code libraries, there’s millions out there.
Find a mentor
Another fantastic way to speed up your learning is to ask a colleague who knows how to code, or contact a tutor on the internet and ask them to be your mentor. This might mean they would perform code reviews on your work, or to even pair program with you. This will help you rapidly speed your understanding up as you will be able to ask them specific questions which you would probably not be able to ask in any other context.
Divide and conquer
Probably my favorite technique is the method of applying the divide and conquer principle to your programming. This takes a little bit of time to master but it works the same as in any other context. You will start with a big problem, such as the need to build an entire website, and break it up into smaller problems, such as the need to build a header, footer or navigation bar. By utilizing this strategy, you will be able to tackle larger problems and not get overwhelmed.
The road to becoming a web developer is a long and challenging one. However, if you follow these tips, you’ll be creating complex web apps in no time.
Author bio:
Written by Daniel Boterhoven from Viewport Tech.
