Retrospection is inevitable once you get older. What would you have done differently when you started? Engineer Man thought the same and shared these thoughts in a video back in January
You know what they say: hindsight is 20/20 and when I was young I didn’t know anything about anything and had nobody to ask. For those just starting out in programming or even those who have a little experience, I have some valuable advice to share with you that I wish someone had told me long ago. I really hope it helps you.
As someone who also started coding at a young age (11, and it was HTML) and did study computer science at university (but dropped out after 6 months because I didn’t like it), I could relate to some of EM’s story.
The first piece of advice I would have given to my younger self is that I need to recognize that learning does not happen overnight. It’s really common for somebody to get into their head, thinking that they’re going to go from no knowledge to just a mastery in a programming language in a short period of time and that’s just not really how it works and this is true of any technology that’s related to programming as well. Now it is different once you already have some skill in an area; it is, of course, easier to pick new things up but when you’re just starting out it’s going to take time and you have to recognize that learning programming is very much a marathon and not a sprint and it’s also a marathon that never ends and that’s why it’s pointless to sprint.
That’s something I learnt after a few months of learning how to code in Python and it’s so important. You see other people excelling and making progress beyond your basic understanding and think you’re behind when you’re actually on track. Ironically, sprints have a meaning in project management—they’re “short, time-boxed period when a scrum team works to complete a set amount of work”—but you get the idea.
Stream the rest below.
