Getting started with a new chapter in life is accompanied by failures and mistakes. And something as technical as programming can be frustrating for newbies, not because it's as tough as grinding stones but because newbies are prone to making mistakes and repeating them.        

Successful programmers are the newbies who failed, learned through mistakes, and never stopped. Stopping can never be the option, just keep taking the right paths to success. Do not hesitate to point your mistakes out and say them goodbye for good. Stick around to learn what mistakes almost every newbie has ever made through his journey.

Doubting Your Skills and Capabilities

First encounters with a new programming language, and that too when you’re a newbie, lead to frustrating fear of not being able to do it and that’s absolutely normal. Programming requires being creative and being creative without believing in your creativity is impossible.

Just never stop believing that you’re not alone in this. There's a large community of people you can relate to and a large one that can inspire you to overcome this situation and go on moving forward. So surround yourself with the right communities where you can learn and grow.

Trying to Stuff Yourself with Several Languages at a Time

You might wonder that learning several languages together would make you a master at programming. But the reality is the other way around. Trying to stuff yourself with several languages at a time ends up in a situation where you hardly learn anything about any one of them. And that's such a waste of time!

So mark your goals and start with one language at a time. Choose a language with a robust structure that would help you learn basic programming strategies. And for that, Java can be your go-to language through CodeGym Java Course

Three top platforms for a budding programmer to hone the skills required for mastery are: 

• Codegym

• Codecademy

• Udemy 

Trying to Memorize the Code

Are you cramming on the codes and searching Google for tips to memorize codes? Stop right there. Many people still don’t know that memorizing codes is like getting on to the spoon-feeding technique which stops the learning process.

Programmers have a certain thought process that has to be built up by practicing codes. Be creative, learn the basic structures and patterns of the languages and write codes yourself, you might fail the first few times. But even that trying and failing process is helping you learn too. It helps you think like a programmer and develop a programmers' thought process.       

Skipping the Brainstorming and Planning

If you're somebody who believes in “unplanned trips are the best” and think that coding would work well like that, then that is probably an immature approach. Spending the time sketching out a plan beforehand might sound like a waste of time, but in the end, it actually reduces your coding time and makes it effective as well.

Work sequentially to avoid messing up. Start with thinking about the goals of your code, then start researching your ideas, sketch out a plan you’re going to follow, start coding, validate it and modify it to fix any errors.

You Don't Know if You’re Over-Commenting

Many beginners go through the dilemma of over-commenting even when they are not doing so, while the others don’t even consider figuring out if their comments are just cluttering the code. 

First things first, if your comments just seem to be a rephrased English version of your already comprehensible code, then probably you’re over commenting. Commenting is effectively beneficial only if done the right way: 

• Make sure that your comment is to the point and relevant enough.

• Try using self-explanatory names for functions, arguments and variables.

• Do not add comments for things that are already quite obvious.

• Do not hesitate to use them as long as they’re beneficial and you’re not cluttering the code with unnecessary comments.

Ignoring Debuggers

Learning programming languages is pretty much a trial and error thing. And no doubt, you can never be efficient in programming if you do not consider the debugging part. Copying codes from various places is the easy way out, but in that case, you’re not learning anything.

When you choose to go the extra mile, writing the codes and then debugging them when they don’t work, that’s when you’re exposed to an all-new arena of learning. Both of these practices are symbiotically related, go hand in hand.

Programmers know the stress of finding a missed semicolon in a PHP code quite well. You should never step into the programming arena without some useful debugging tools such as: 

• Netbeans

• IntelliJ IDEA

• Visual Studio Code 

Neglecting the Backup Part

Having automatic backups of your work is crucial to your productivity level most of the time. If you haven’t been able to relate yet, just imagine losing a code you’ve been working on for 9 hours straight. Isn’t that a devastating feeling? Losing work just because you didn’t care to back it up is just out of the question for a programmer.

No programmer would ever want to lose his hard-earned code. There are so many good tools out there to get you all covered up. They help you automatically back your work up. So you no more have to blame things like technical errors, malfunctioning, or other factors that would generally lead to loss of work.

Try to figure out the most convenient tool for yourself and stick to it. You may consider trying Github, Gitlab, and Bitbucket.

Conclusion

Making mistakes is natural but fighting them off makes you a master. Consider all the mistakes many professional programmers made along their way so that you don’t have to take the longer and harder way to succeed. Make sure to be surrounded by an inspiring community to guide you, planning, using backup and debugging tools, and working on your underlying concepts.

Learn about the mistakes generally made by newbies to avoid them and surround yourself with expert guidance communities like Codegym to flourish as a programmer. 

• Tom Bezlar is a tech geek and gamer with a Master’s degree in Computer Science. His passion is Java programming, so he write about tips and tricks to learn Java and other languages, coding tools and IT trends in general.