What does a novice programmer need to understand?

You learn by programming. The only way to improve your level of programming is to program. Don't let self-righteousness and insecurity keep you from even trying.

Programming is not exam preparation. And the amount of information that you managed to remember will not play a major role in the work.

It is perfectly acceptable to cheat while writing code. I use Google (Stackoverflow and others) for a lot of things. And so do many programmers.

Accumulating problems without checking is obviously the wrong strategy. I used to endlessly fix my code and hope it would work right. The difficulty with this approach is that the errors literally pile up one on top of the other, and it is very difficult to understand what went wrong.

Self-education is really hard. Discuss code with other novice developers. This is the best teaching method for most people.

Release your emotions. There will be a lot of error messages during your learning to program. Making mistakes is an integral part of the learning process, and you should not worry too much about it in order to really get good results.

You don't need five monitors. Contrary to what Hollywood tells us, you don't need extra monitors to become a programmer. Chances are your computer is good enough to start programming. Don't waste money.

There is a big difference between uppercase and lowercase letters. Personally, it took me some time to learn to see the differences between similar characters. And until you get used to it, it can cause you some inconvenience at work.

Don't try to understand everything at once. At the very beginning, I tried to find out "why?" for every difficulty in every task that he faced. It's not obligatory. Computers are so complex that you will always have something to learn, and you will never understand absolutely everything anyway. It's OK.

Practice pair programming, and often. This is the fastest way to learn how to program .

Rewriting bad code is part of the process. I used to think that every piece of code I wrote had to be perfect. But in fact, its gradual improvement - making corrections to your code - is normal. You do not write a book, after the publication of which nothing can be corrected.

There is a correct way to ask for help. Everyone needs help at some point. But before you ask for help, make sure you have done the following 4 things (using an example of a method that does not work correctly):

• say to yourself what exactly you see in the method, its nuances;
• clearly explain to yourself what you expected to get as a result of the method;
• clearly explain to yourself what exactly is happening;
• explain why you think the method should work differently.

When you follow these steps, you will most often find a solution to the problem without outside help, since this algorithm will allow you to see the whole problem.

You don't have to be a math genius. Just because you're not a mathematician doesn't mean you can't be a programmer.

Always celebrate your small victories. Programming is cool. And I would never have achieved what I have now if I did not look back from time to time and evaluate the results of my work.

Meet-ups are incredibly valuable. At the very beginning, they scared me a little, but then I got used to it, and it became comfortable for me to visit them. And as soon as it happened, I suddenly realized that there are many developers just like me.

Avoid merge conflicts in projects you are not working on alone. This will make you happier. Merge conflicts are annoying. So when I realized that I could avoid working with them, having time to freeze everything before my teammates did, I felt happy.

Admitting that you don't know something is completely normal. When you get your first really serious assignment as a programmer, chances are you will act like everything is great and you understand everything. You don't have to pretend. Nobody expects you to already know everything.

You don't have to spend 10,000 hours to reach an acceptable level in order to get a job. In fact, you need to be professional enough to know how to correct your mistakes and be able to pull yourself together and focus on problem solving. It takes far less than 10,000 hours.

At some point, you will be thinking about code even when you wake up early in the morning. And when that moment comes, it's really great.

Making serious mistakes is okay. I once made a mistake that cost my company $10,000. And that situation allowed me to learn the most important lesson in my career as a programmer.

The algorithm is similar to looking up a name in a phone book. Algorithms are a step-by-step approach to the goal when there is only one right next step. Simply put, this is the strategy you have chosen to find one particular name in the phone book.

The moment of realization that you know everything and are ready to solve any problem through programming will never come. "Imposter Syndrome" will pester you repeatedly. Once again, don't forget that it's perfectly okay not to know everything. The most important thing is that you yourself understand what exactly you do not know.

Programmers never stop learning. New technologies appear all the time in the IT world, so successful programmers are those who continue to constantly develop and improve themselves.

Make the computer think like a human does. Too many people give the impression that you need to think like a computer. Actually it's the other way around

In programming, it is important to choose good tools for solving specific problems. There are plenty to choose from: at least there are plenty of open source libraries, tools, and frameworks at your disposal. So one of your tasks is to decide on the tools and “sharpen” them for your tasks.

Usually, we give up just before we achieve any results. Learning to code (especially with the goal of changing careers) takes a lot of work indeed. It takes a lot of time and self-discipline, but it's possible. A lot of people make the mistake of retreating when they have almost reached their goal.

Learning to program is not easy. And that's why it's worth it!