You can learn the basics of programming in no time. Countless resources will get you going. The hard part is to take a step from simple conditionals and loops to real-life applications. Fortunately, you can develop a few simple skills to help you along the way.

You’ll spend lots of time searching for information, and you need to do it effectively. Googling is a transferrable skill, so if you researched in depth any subject, you’d be fine. But make sure you put on quotes to search for the whole phrase, know how to set a date range, and use a hyphen to exclude words from search results.

You also need to master programming-specific Google skills. Not all information sources are created equal. Pay attention to websites and people that helped you solve a problem. Over time you’ll build a robust database of reliable resources.

Remember relevant technical terms. It will prove a lot more beneficial than you think. Programmers have a particular language to communicate fast and accurately. To find the information, you need to understand that language. For example, it’s a lot easier to discover why you don’t have access to the variable if you know the term

. Note every technical name and define it, if possible, using your own words.

Besides, when you know proper terms, you don’t need to read so much. Skim the internet. Search for the keywords in the text instead of reading everything.

When coding, most of the time, you’re on autopilot. But to progress as a developer, you need to be mindful of the code. Use errors as reminders to focus.

Mistakes are the perfect opportunities to learn new things. A new error or unexpected bug may vastly deepen your code understanding. When encountered, take a deep breath and analyze what happened. After you solve the issue — take notes. You’ll stumble on this same error again. Without the notes, it’s almost sure you’ll forget how to fix it.

Try not to take mistakes personally. Treat them as friends who help you develop your skills. If you need more information about a productive attitude towards errors, I wrote an

When you’ve mastered coding fundamentals, the learning curve becomes steeper. New concepts are significantly harder to grasp. You need to learn effectively in order to progress.

Assume you’ve watched a great tutorial. You coded along and built an app with your teacher. But two days later you don’t remember much. When you try to use new knowledge, you get stuck. You feel the urge to watch that great tutorial again.

Time is a precious resource. You shouldn’t use it for rewatching or rereading.

Here are three simple techniques that help you study effectively.

Active recall is a process in which you try to retrieve information from memory, instead of rereading it. A typical example is the use of flashcards.

You can use active recall anytime when learning to code. Next time when you’re watching or reading a tutorial, don’t code. Focus on following a teacher. Then try to recreate code from memory. Only get back to the lesson if you can’t reproduce some part.

You’ll understand new concepts much better if you learn in smaller chunks spread over time than if you cram in one sitting. Create a repetition system with the breaks increasing each time.

For example, learn about closures for thirty minutes. Check out what the closure is and when to use it, see some code samples, take notes, or make flashcards. Tomorrow, try to recall information about closure from memory. If you succeed, try again after three days. Each time lengthen a delay between repetitions. If you fail — stick to this same delay.

Experiment with different schedules to find the one that suits you the best.

Remember how you used to learn at school? You may have studied over all the semester, but you worked hardest and learned the most before the exam. Use that to your advantage.

Create a simple schedule. For example, devote two hours to testing once a month. You can easily find tests online or create them by yourself. The exam doesn’t need to have a traditional form. It’s even better if you test yourself by making an app using the knowledge you want to solidify.

There’s one way to learn to code: coding. But the world conspires to distract you — new articles, tutorials, courses fight for your attention. And the teacher in the last video had a great font in his IDE; you want to get it.

It’s all background noise. Don’t google for fonts or themes — yours are okay. Don’t watch another tutorial on this same topic. I know it’s easy, but it’s a waste of time. Your time is limited, use it wisely.

Build more side projects using the knowledge from tutorials. Don’t abandon the project after the first setback. Developers who take a break from the project don’t get back. So when you get stuck during an exciting project, ask for help. The programmers’ community is vast; lots of people want to help you.

Almost everything you’re trying to do right now has been done before. For your next project, you don’t need to create authentication or routing on your own. Numerous formidable and tested libraries are waiting for you.

Choosing the right tools is a part of your job. You need to become an expert in finding libraries and frameworks to help you. As developers, we’re standing on the shoulders of giants — leverage that.

But there’s a caveat. To pick your tools correctly, you need to strive to understand them. In your spare time, analyze the code of the libraries you’re using. You can even do a fun project of trying to recreate them. Many libraries are not that complex at their core. Think about how you would implement them.

How to Progress Rapidly as a Developer

It’s the most important skill in your life. Seriously. Software developers learn all the time. And even if programming is just a hobby to you, you still need to learn efficiently.

The basics are quite straightforward. To learn effectively, you have to build a habit — preferably learn every day. Additionally, use these three techniques:

You’ll struggle. Programming is difficult. You’ll fail often. Whether it’s some obscure bug or a concept you can’t grasp, challenges will appear. The best way to stay motivated in the face of adversity? By having fun!

Take a break from your task and find some joy in programming. You can solve algorithmic puzzles, take a look at creative coding, or create some silly app — whatever makes you smile.

Programming is not a chore. You need to have a good time and find something that sparks your curiosity, so look for opportunities to enjoy yourself.

You’ll spend lots of time searching for information. You need to learn how to do it proficiently.

Google, Stack Overflow, and GitHub issues will become your natural habitat, so make sure you can use them effectively. And don’t ever be shy when you need to look for something trivial — we all do it.

Practice makes perfect. It’s that simple. No amount of tutorials, courses, and boot camps can act as a substitute for it. You’ll be tempted to enroll in another class. Don’t do it.

You don’t need other videos explaining these same subjects over and over again. You need to build things yourself. Every app you build is worth dozens of tutorials. Create, fail, explore — that’s how you grow.

There’s nothing more annoying than a bug you can’t find. Sometimes the project stops for weeks because one nasty bug is haunting you. Unfortunately, debugging is a huge part of programming and you have to master it.

Study debugging techniques and learn to use logs and debuggers efficiently. As a quick tip, I recommend debugging by divide and conquer. It’s a technique in which you split suspicious code by half and look at which half seems to be broken. Repeat it on smaller and smaller code parts until you find a culprit.

Often you’ll have a problem and no idea how to tackle it. Creating a huge app from scratch seems like an impossible venture. Instead of wondering how to do it, do it. Isolate some small part and start coding.

You don’t need to create perfect code. You need to have something and try out some ideas. It will give you a better understanding of your problem.

Thinking before programming is necessary, but you’ll only know if your plan is feasible at all when you get your hands dirty.

7. Be Considerate — Write Readable Code

This quote should be your mantra. Building applications is a team sport and you have to communicate with other team members through your code. Even if you’re working solo on a personal project, you’re communicating with someone else — your future self.

Be considerate. Think about everyone who will read your code. Study code readability and maintainability. You’ll reap the benefits fast.

You’ll make a mess of your code — I guarantee it. Applications tend to grow in unpredictable directions and the code inevitably gets more and more cluttered. After some time, it will become unwieldy and each minor change may require dozens of adjustments.

To avoid that, clean something every time you touch a file. Get rid of unnecessary things that impede code understanding. Remove unused variables, change the names of others. Delete outdated comments, simplify your abstractions. Leave the code in a better state than you encountered it in.

Do you know how you become a great writer? By reading great writers and trying to emulate them until you find your own voice. It’s the same with programmers.

Look for open source projects with great code quality and try to understand them. If you’ve got some proficient developers at your company, look at their commits. Study the code of the greats and try to learn from it. Reading their code is like reading their minds —take advantage of that.

You should have a blog. Period. It may serve multiple purposes. You can use it as a diary of your progress and growth. You can learn a lot from writing about the things you are learning. The process will solidify and organize your knowledge. You can help others who face these same problems. Maybe you’ll even find a job or build a community. Just blog.

I didn’t start a blog until I was five years into my programming journey. It’s my greatest learning regret.

Your job is to solve problems — not write code. Learn how to identify what problems you are trying to solve: your client or boss's requirements.

As programmers, we tend to waste hours on unimportant things. We polish our code like a priceless car. But the code is just a tool. The product is what matters. Being productive is different from being busy. Being productive is different from being a perfectionist. Being productive is all about providing value. Code to provide the value.

Schedule some minimal time for coding every day. You may take a day or two off, but building a habit of programming is essential.

Maybe your code is not art (yet), but you should listen to Neil. Consistency is essential for your success as a developer.

You will forget almost everything you read today. Don’t trust your memory and document everything — the problems you encountered and how you solved them. Algorithms, functions, learning materials. Everything.

You can use your blog as a space for your notes or some of the other countless tools available. Whatever works for you. But please take notes. Build your own knowledge database.

You can’t be a jack of all trades. Programming is too vast and you will never learn everything. Besides, experts tend to be rewarded generously.

Especially if you’re a junior developer, you need to pick your tech stack. Nobody expects you to know everything, but you should have in-depth knowledge of

Programming is hard. You’ll fail many more times than you imagine. And that’s fine. As long as you’re encountering new ways to fail, you’re making progress.

The secret is not to be too hard on yourself. Embrace the failure and recognize that it’s an essential part of the process. Extend beyond your limits. Make the failure you friend.

Look for optimizations everywhere. Automate every mundane and boring thing you can. Look for the patterns in your work, repeated code, or similar features. Then automate them.

Every line of code is expensive to write and maintain. Look for ways to write less code, and you’ll find you’ve got fewer bugs and better quality. Use well-tested libraries instead of writing everything from scratch.

Leverage the tools at your disposal to create the most value from the least time and code.

Taking care of your health is amongst the best things you can do for your career. And your life. I won’t go into all the overworking drawbacks, but to name a few of them: raised stress level, lowered energy, troubles with sleep, feeling distracted, mood changes. And you’ll work worse.

Overworking is not worth it, really. Set some boundaries. For some, working 40 hours a week is the maximum. Others can work as long as 50 or 60. It doesn't matter where your limit is. What matters is not exceeding it.

Curiosity is what I’m looking for when I’m recruiting junior developers. A curious person always wants to learn more and understand how and why things work. For my company, your long-term contribution is more important than your current skill set.

Be interested. It will benefit your growth and your job hunt. It will also make your life more interesting.

That was a lot of tips, but there are more of them. Maybe you’ve got something to add?

18 Ways to Improve Your Programming

I’ve seen hundreds of junior frontend developers' resumes. In an average recruitment process, we get 80 candidates for one job.

The sad truth is you have to stand out. If there’s nothing special about your skills or experience, you have to be lucky to get a job. And relying on luck is not a reliable tactic.

Fortunately, it’s not that hard to stand out. Most of the resumes are like carbon copies. The candidates finished the same bootcamps or online courses. They have similar projects. Sometimes, even their portfolio pages are indistinguishable.

Here are a few ideas to put you ahead of the competition.

Blogging has so many benefits for junior developers. Above all, writing is amongst the best ways of learning. To explain a topic, you have to deep-dive into it and structure your mental models.

When you start to write a blog post, you discover hidden layers of complexity everywhere—the things you took for granted suddenly become questionable.

Even simple things, like paddings and margins in CSS, have some complexities and edge cases. By the time you finish the article, you’ll grasp the subject much better.

What’s even better, your blog is proof of your progress. If you’ve been blogging regularly for months, your future employer can see programming is not a temporary whim but something you take seriously. That’s a great indicator you’re someone worth working with.

The next advantage of having a blog is the chance to create a network. If your blog becomes popular, you’ve got the unique ability to meet other people or even help them. It’s not only fun but can also help you get noticed and find a job by referral.

Not starting a blog when I was a junior developer is my greatest regret. I could have accelerated my education and helped others.

Suppose you’re like almost everyone — you find postings on job boards and apply to the companies when you more or less meet the requirements. That’s fine. But there’s one problem: Thousands of other people are doing the same.

It’s hard to find a job when you’re doing the same as everyone else.

Apply to the companies you like. Many smaller companies need more employees but don’t want to go through the hassle of the recruitment process. So help them.

Research companies you’d like to work with and send them an email. Just a short message about how you admire what they do and would love to be a part of the team. Chances are you’ll get an answer, and if you’re lucky, you may even get a job.

Being proactive is so advantageous because you cut through the noise. You don’t need to compete with dozens of developers. You just need to convince a company you’ll bring value.

What’s more, by being proactive, you show your future employer you’re resourceful, care about the company, and appreciate its products.

Freelancing is not for everybody. Especially at the beginning of your career, working for a company and having a mentor is usually a better bet.

But… a little freelancing is a great way to get relevant experience. Looking for work on Fiverr or Upwork can be underwhelming because the competition is huge and prices are low. Yet when you eventually find a client, you get many benefits.

Even a cheap project is better than a free project. And all your learning projects are free. So creating an app for a small salary is a bit like finding someone willing to pay for your learning. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Additionally, freelancing clients can pay you with something more valuable than money — testimonials. Having real and satisfied clients on your portfolio page is a huge boost to your job-seeking chances.

And if you are fortunate, one of your freelancing customers can offer you a job. Isn’t that great?

You may have heard that contributing to open source is great to improve your programming skills. It is. It’s also a great sign for your future employer — it shows that you’re active in the programming community, can use version control, and understand the software creation process.

No one is doing it. In the hundreds of junior developer resumes I’ve seen, maybe a handful of candidates were contributing to open source. And guess what? They got invited to a technical interview.

I know open source seems scary to junior developers. You may have many doubts. How can you provide any value? Where do you start? Will they judge you? Don’t worry, the programming world is friendly and always happy to help beginners.

GitHub repository. It includes many tips on how to start and a list of beginner-friendly projects. This guide will smooth your transition to the open source world.

Writing good code will make your job search easier. What is good code? Code that does its job, is readable, maintainable, and follows good conventions like DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) and KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

When you’re a beginner, you don’t know if your code is any good. The ability to recognize solid code is something that comes with experience. You don’t have experience, so you don’t know. You can’t get experience because you don’t have a job—it’s a vicious circle.

Luckily, I’ve got a shortcut to show your future employer you know what you’re doing: Write tests for your code.

Tests are great. They show that you care about quality. Junior developers rarely include them, so you can stand out. They are proof you’re able to do some extra work.

You may not know if your code is good, but you’ll know if it is tested. And tested code is always better.

How about you? What are your strategies when looking for a job? Or maybe you already got a job and want to share your experience.

5 Tips To Beat the Competition and Get a Frontend Job

What to do next? Photo by Startup Stock Photos

How many courses, tutorials, and articles are waiting on your to-do list? If you’re a bit like me, the answer is dozens. I’m a passionate learner who is interested in a wide range of programming subjects. But lately, I started to wonder which courses are worth my time and which are just a distraction.

If you’re trying to develop your career, you probably encountered the idea of T-shaped people. They are experts in one field and have some expertise in other domains. For example, you can be a proficient back-end developer with some knowledge about DevOps, product management, and the front end.

T-shaped people are priceless employees because their diverse knowledge facilitates communication and bolsters creativity.

A broad range of interests may be advantageous. I’m an advocate for versatility and believe it’s the key competence of the future. But to be a T-shaped person, you need do possess reasonably in-depth knowledge of several subjects.

Finishing a course or two doesn’t mean you understand a field. What’s even worse, it may give you false confidence in your abilities. Learning too many things and spreading yourself thin won’t help you to develop a career. It just makes you a dabbler.

Much like you’re not an accomplished writer if you wrote two blog posts, you’re not a competent programmer after a month-long boot camp.

A T-shaped person is not someone who just scratched the surface of multiple fields. You have to carefully plan how to deepen your primary area of expertise and develop secondary skills.

To achieve success, you need to identify essential competencies and challenges. Later, laser-focus on them, removing all unnecessary courses. I’ll use myself as an example of how you can approach this.

I’m a competent front-end web developer with some knowledge about back-end programming in several languages. I’ve created a few mobile apps using React Native. That’s more or less my skill set, with a strong bend towards the front end. Time to choose my essentials and cut off the excess.

For me, it makes sense to focus on front-end development — both on the web and mobile. To be a proficient front-end developer, I need to be an expert on JavaScript. So all the courses on advanced JavaScript may be useful, although I can remove the course on creative coding from the to-do list.

You can build any app with plain JavaScript, but it’s often impractical. I work mainly with React, so I’ll focus on it and its ecosystem. Goodbye, Angular and Vue. I’ll miss you, Svelte.

So my crucial skills are JavaScript and React. Other languages and frameworks can be used as secondary skills, but my focus is clear.

JavaScript and React’s ecosystem are vast subjects, so I need to narrow my interests even more. The best way to do that is by choosing courses you can use in practice.

I’ve been learning Redux for the third time. The first two times, I learned it because everyone on the web claimed it was essential. I didn’t want to be left behind, so I finished a tutorial and read the documentation. But I didn’t use it for any project, so I quickly forgot everything.

Eventually, I needed to use Redux professionally. I worked with it immediately after completing the course. I encountered a few issues, and with some help from the documentation, I got it to work correctly. Now I can use Redux anytime I want.

Real learning occurs when you’re working on a project and thinking intensively. No number of tutorials can help you if you don’t use your knowledge in practice. Learning things you’re not going to use on professional or personal projects is a waste of time.

Never assume you understand the subject unless you can explain it clearly to someone with significantly less experience. Always watch out for gaps in your understanding and be wary of false confidence.

Almost everything in programming is complicated if you dig deep enough. For example, do you know how you can manage the state in React? You can pass props through components or use Context API. Alternatively, you may pick a library (maybe Redux or MobX). And Facebook just released a new state management library called Recoil.

Solutions to the state management problem are numerous. Why do you think that is? It’s because state management is hard. You may believe you get it after finishing a few tutorials, but you don’t. Only after you encounter real-life challenges will you understand why those libraries exist, what problems they solve, and why it’s complicated.

Keep in mind that you need to challenge yourself and remember: Programming is hard and you probably don’t understand as well as you believe.

To become a real T-shaped person, you need to develop some secondary skills. I’ve been working on that quite extensively. In the last few months, I started (and never finished) courses on subjects ranging from DevOps through the Golang language to machine learning. Was it fun? Definitely. Is it useful in my career? Nope.

The essentials of learning secondary skills are quite similar to those of the main area of interest. You need to pick skills according to your priorities and chances to use them in real life. The theory alone won’t cut it. So delete irrelevant courses mercilessly.

To further my career, I need to focus on skills that may prove beneficial in the long run and are close enough to my primary specialty that I can benefit from the partial overlap of the knowledge.

I don’t have a strong mathematical background, so it’s time to say goodbye to machine learning and AI. It looks like I won’t become a data scientist.

As for some popular back-end languages, I won’t be able to use them in my company for the foreseeable future, so it’s a waste of time. DevOps is a hard one. I feel like I need to learn it, but it doesn’t look like I’ll have a chance to work in it, so I’ll skip it.

Since I work extensively with designers, it’s a solid idea to learn the design basics. I enjoy writing about programming a lot, so books on that subject have to stay on my to-do list. My project management skills are not as good as I’d like, so developing this area has to become my priority.

I still feel tempted to bookmark many courses. The feeling won’t go away. But I try to only pick the ones that can benefit my career in the long run.

In the last few weeks, I removed many courses from my to-do list. What courses can you remove?

How to Become a Better Programmer by Learning Less

Knowing how to google is the most important skill for a developer. Everyone uses Google. Junior developers, mid or senior. It's not cheating to google everything! But do you really know how to google more efficiently? Let me show you some google hacks 👨‍💻.

Search for an explicit phrase by enclosing it in quotation marks.

Refine your search to a specific site using the site: command. For example, typing on the google site:stackoverflow.com will search only on StackOverflow. 💪

Search for multiple words using a plus sign.

The minus sign allows you to specify words that that shouldn't show up in your results.

The tilde ~ operator searches for related words, not just the word you type.

The asterisk * is a wildcard. That means it can match any word! Combine it with the explicit search for awesome results.

A lot of answers on the internet are outdated. Use a time range operator to narrow the scope.

Narrow the scope of your search to a specific filetype! If you use operator filetype:pdf, you will get only PDF results!

You can combine all of the above methods in

How to Progress Rapidly as a Developer

18 Ways to Improve Your Programming

5 Tips To Beat the Competition and Get a Frontend Job

How to Become a Better Programmer by Learning Less

Know How to Google Is Important. Do You Know How Do It?