Do you know what’s not “marketable”?
That the only way to learn to ride a bike it by actually doing it. The only way to get better at coding is, by coding! So what’s the problem? People are lazy, plus they don’t wanna work on bigger projects, they wanna feel entertained watching tuts. Do you do the same?
Have you ever seen a builder/construction worker do his job?
If you asked them to build an additional toilet, wouldn’t just bring tools and start the work! They will plan, and plan and plan more! The least YOU can do when coding is writing a simple step by step list that you can follow! Don’t just jump in, use your brain.
Less is actually good, seriously.
Use what you know to build the most complex thing you can. Are you learning Javascript? Use it to build as complex script as you can, don’t build small tools, build big stuff, plan out as mentioned in previous chapter. The only way to actually master the fundamentals. Watching tut on youtube is not practicing, it’s entertainment. Programiming isn’t entertainment. Master walking, before you can run!
Look at my beautiful designs on paper!
STOP for sake of god writing code on paper all the damn time, yes, writing on paper is cool but if you’re wasting time making it look beautiful, using 10 different highlighters, all you’re doing is wasting paper! Learning foreach loop? just open the editor and write the code, some people spend their lives coding on paper, you’re not getting a job like that.
Saying the obvious, nothing is easy in this world.
Code for long hours, 5-6 hours everyday, just like a job. Yeah, I know people have commitments but if you wanna hit that next level and not be stuck in the mud forever, you have to put the hours in. I have no clue how you’d do it, but spending 30 mins each day is not enough. Programming isn’t exception, it goes for any skill you wanna get good at!
Why help others, for free!?
As you get better at certain things you’ll wanna see code from other people’s prespective too. Everyone has their way of coding. You wanna see how they code and help them, if you have time, go help people on Stackoverflow. This is one of the best ways to expose yourself to something NEW, but also something that’s practical (because others are using it!). If you know Laravel, go help people who’s stuck, in returns, you’re helping yourself, making your own skills better!
Complex systems: Don’t write ANY code at all.
It’s really a difficult task to just sit with a piece of paper and think of a problem in details and come up with a solution. People would rather open the editor and start typing, then end up with a solution that’s not well thought, code itself if messy, takes twice as long and the end solution really is just a lot of guess work. What you should rather do when you’re working on something complex is sit down and write the goal.
Like so: Goal: Make sure all the data is deleted when user asks for their data to be removed from the system for legal reasons. Now you know what the goal is, the next step is to think of a solution, browse the code, see what changes you’d need to make, think of the consequencies of making such change, note everything down. Then start coding. More complex the code is, the more time you’ll need to spend thinking about it.
If you’re working on super small codebase that’s not doing anything serious, you can jump straight into the editor and write code.
Going in Circles
A typical scenario is working on an annoying piece of code and going in circles for hours, you made the change on line 58 and it didn’t work, then you made another change on line 450, then 400, then line 20..?
1h30 mins later..
You’re making the SAME change to line 58, AGAIN!!!?
You forgot you’d already tested the same fix and it didn’t work. You see the patterns? You’ll keep going in circles..
Solution:
Write down the fixes/changes that you tried and didn’t work. Open notepad and just paste some code, line number and a small comment. This will save you a lot of time because you’d be working on new solutions each time, not the ones you already thought about an hours ago..