The #1 programming tip you will ever learn

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This is another post in the spirit of the STEMGeek's Hackathon.

The prize pool for the Hackathon is over 12,000 Hive right now.


There is one tip that is so good it will jumpstart your programming ability more than anything else.

It is completely language agnostic.

It will never be outdated.

Got any idea what it is?

The number 1 secret to development.

It's simple, stop doing tutorials!

I haven't polled every developer, but I have a good suspicion this affects a large number of them.

When you start developing, you follow tutorials. These tutorials can be very helpful but they can also be an anchor and hold you back. You need a balance, enough tutorials so you understand what needs to be done (you don't need to memorize it) but you can't spend all your time doing tutorials.

You want to start your own project, build something. It could be something that uses the ideas in the tutorials you have been following, or a project you want to complete that may or may be over your head right now.

By doing an actual project, you will learn far more than any tutorial will teach you, you be forced to think for yourself, solve problems, look up documentation and examples.

Tutorials are not bad, but they can easily eat up all your time and prevent your own personal development.

If you are participating in the STEMGeeks Hackathon, time is even more important as you only have 8 days to finish your project and submit it.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this turns out.


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12 comments
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Build something. Fuck up. Spend hours trying to fix that fuck up. Thats where I learn. The fuckups. Fucking up means I'm reading stuff and learning more about what I need to do to unfuckup. It takes time, and its a learning experience, but now I'm able to solve my problems so much faster because I have resources to turn to when I eventually do fuckup. If you aren't fucking up, you are doing it wrong.

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This one and also read the official documentation of any language you are trying to learn. In my opinion the official docs are the best tutorial you could ask for

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Its unfortunate how many of us get stuck in tutorial land. I know when I first started, I wasted way too much time doing tutorials on repeat. I wish I would have listened when someone said to just dive in and work on a project.

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Totally agree with it! Same happens for the Graphic Design - you need to follow some tutorials just to learn how to use some options while you don't have to limit yourself to those, because in the end it's about your creativity and being able to create something :)

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Build something or anything, just build. You will fail 100 times but you will get the success and then you will come out as a better developer.

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This, really a good point. We in the GitPlait community want people to learn through Tutorials. But it is important that developers pick up without the need to based on Tutorials. We have featured this post in our 2-days GitPlait-elite post.

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And stop reading the books also. Just code.

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