This Is What Makes You A Good Programmer
Programming is one of the top and hottest fields in the industry. Being a programmer, and surviving is tough. But, it is fun, it is creative, it is powerful. With technologies growing drastically, there are a lot of people getting into computer science and coding. Thus, you need to stand out from the others. Below are the few points that make you a Good Programmer.
Learning Regularly and Keeping Yourself Updated
Well, just like doctors, programming is a lifelong journey of learning and improving. With the technologies evolving, you need to keep learning and keep yourself updated. Every day a new technology or framework pops up, so you cannot limit yourself to the skills that you have. Getting a degree or a job is not the end, it is the beginning. Because, until you get a job or a degree, you are in your comfort zone and you learn things that are taught to you, but in the corporates or in your career, you might come across a project that has to be done in a technology that you don’t know. So learning regularly, practicing code, and keeping yourself with the tech trends is the key.
Following a Schedule and Prioritizing Work
As a programmer, multitasking is a skill that you must surely have. While working on various projects, various modules, or when you are learning and practicing something, you should be able to prioritize your work. You need to follow a schedule and decide how much time you want to spend on what and what is something that has to be done as soon as possible, or something that can be done later. Thus, making and following a schedule is an important part of a good programmer because it will make sure you are not wasting your time and energy on something that is not that important.
Learning From Documentation
As we have already discussed, as a programmer, you need to keep yourself updated about the need of the hour since new technologies keep coming. So, when you want to learn and implement fairly new technology, it is pretty common that you might not find a good resource to learn from, you won’t find any good blogs or video courses. Thus, as a programmer, you should be able to read and learn from documentation. Documentation can be tough, they can be complicated, but for programmers, they are the best resource to learn and find a solution for something.
Following Coding Conventions and Writing Clean Code
This is one of the most important aspects of programming. This is one of the major things that discriminates between a good and bad programmer. As a programmer, you should always follow the programming conventions, for example, using camelCase, giving meaningful names to variables and functions, using comments, and describing your code well. Such practices play an important role in programming. Programming is not just about coding stuff, and getting things done, it is about writing better code, clean and readable code.
Diving Deep Into Concepts and Getting to Know Behind the Scenes
Programming is not just about working with various frameworks or libraries and knowing the implementation part. It will be really beneficial to dive deep into behind the scenes and understand how things work internally. For example, people nowadays while working with machine learning, straightway start with various python libraries and create models without getting hands-on machine learning algorithms and understanding the math and logic behind it. And that’s completely wrong. The point here is, you should know how to implement the things, but on the other hand, you should know how it works internally.
Working on Your Physical and Mental Health
As much as it is important to work on your skills, it is also important to work on your physical and mental health. As a programmer, we spend hours sitting in front of a computer in the same position. Thus, it can cause a lot of physical health problems such as eye strain, back pain, neck pain, and more. Also, working for hours can lead to mental stress. So, it is necessary to take regular breaks and keep yourself hydrated. Also, you should regularly do some exercise or yoga to keep a good state of body and mind. This will lead to better health and higher productivity.
Good Googling and Debugging Skills
Well, programming is less of coding and more of debugging. You will frequently find yourself in the mud of errors. Thus, solving and understanding bugs/errors is an underrated skill. It’s not just about errors, it is about understanding the error, understanding what caused it, and knowing how to find a solution. Also, as a programmer, skills are important but googling is an added trophy to your showcase. Knowing how to google, what to search for, which keywords to use and so much more. Thus, debugging skills play an important role in programmers in their day to day activities.
Well, if you don’t have the above habits, start developing them and you will see the drastic change in your programming career. Keep Learning! Keep Improving!