In this article, you saw an overview of most of the best practices for writing better code, from using coding standards to team-wide formatting, the importance of refactoring and how to master it, using professional tools such as a test framework, code document and version control to help, managing your codebase. If you haven’t followed these steps so far, it’s worth training yourself and the team for them.
- Independently
If you have the iron willpower and are eager to become a programmer, then you can achieve your goal through self-education. This is not the easiest and shortest way: you yourself must understand the information chaos and fight procrastination. But you can study at a convenient time for relatively little money or completely free.
It is easiest to start with interactive online courses. Many materials on the Internet explain the basics of programming and set the direction for further development. Pay special attention to the courses they teach on examples of real projects, ie they tell you to step by step how to create a particular program or website.
Remember that without exercise you can do nothing. Study project-oriented courses and try to write programs and pages that are dismantled in them. Browse YouTube lectures on projects you’d like to develop. First, copy other people’s work and analyse it. Then try to move away from the original, experiment, change individual elements until you can create something unique.
In addition to courses and video lectures, official documentation can be found on language websites and. Once you get the basics, look for the latest best practices for your programming language. These books contain the best design techniques.
“Be sure to set a goal to create your project and work on it constantly”
This will help you consolidate the knowledge gained and understand what information you are still missing. Your skills will develop along with the project. When you finish it, work on a new, harder one.
If you have any difficulties in the learning or development process through consola, you can always turn to programming communities like Toaster and Stack Overflow for any question. It is convenient to hone your skills on special websites where you can compete with other developers by solving various practical problems with the help of code.
If you feel your development is stalling or want to speed up learning, try the following options.
- With the help of a mentor
A mentor is a personal mentor who points out mistakes, warns of pitfalls, helps guide the course. A useful recommendation, received at the right time, can save you a lot of trouble and save you a lot of time. Therefore, the mentor will not hurt anyone.
Find out if there are developers you know. Maybe one of them will want to help you. If you do not know such people, you can look for them in programming communities. For example, on the same “Toaster”. Only mentoring services are not cheap, but only for spending a lot of time, no one wants foreigners.
- With teachers of “live” courses
Distance and face-to-face courses with instructors who train developers from scratch have become incredibly popular in recent years. Within this format, you also have to work a lot on your own. But you will study according to a professionally prepared program, and the real person will check the solution to the problem. Disadvantages of the courses include high training costs.
If you prefer to learn internally, you can look for educational centres that teach programming in your area. Unfortunately, such institutions are most often present only in large cities. An example is the IT academy “STEP”, which has branches in several countries.
- At the university
If you have a lot of time left and you are sure that you want to connect your life with programming, you can study computer science at university. But keep in mind that traditional educational institutions are lagging behind, so you will have to master modern programming languages and other technologies on your own.
On the other hand, the university will provide basic knowledge in mathematics, algorithms and other areas that will help you become a high-quality programmer. Over the years of diligent learning, you will develop the right way of thinking, thanks to which you will understand everything in the professional field as you go.