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Practice is a good way to improve your programming skills. Using your list of skills and techniques you want to develop, create a practice schedule. Determine when and for how long you’ll work on your programming skills to help you structure your practice sessions.
Below are the 3 listed methods that will help you to improve your programming skills.
#1 Reading Code
It goes without saying… If you want to be a better writer, you’ve got to become a better reader — this means reading more books, as well as a wider range of books.
In the same way, if you want to become a better programmer, which effectively is a different form of writing, you should seek to read a lot more code, especially code from very good programmers.
Some Github repositories with really good code are:
- Scikit – Learn
- FIndings from Stackoverflow by JJruner
- Bootstrap
It doesn’t stop at reading code.
There are plenty of books out there to help you become a better programmer — A popular book to get you started is The Programmatic Programmer by David Thomas & Andrew Hunt — but reading, in general, is really useful as it expands your mind.
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#2 Set Aside Refactoring Time
I’ll be honest, initially, I adopted the mindset of “if it works, then it’s good”. Refactoring code always gets put off. I would never publish an article without iterating over it once or twice to ensure I am conveying the messaging I wish to.
Of course, code refactoring serves a different purpose. The purpose of refactoring code is to either make the code more efficient, more maintainable or both.
To become a better programmer, you must set aside time to refactor. To improve your refactoring skills, you must learn about refactoring — this will give you an idea of what to look for. Lastly, ensure you devote a lot of time refactoring code. You can revisit past projects or others people’s projects and modify their code to make it more efficient, maintainable, or both.
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#3 Practice by Doing
If you want to become a better writer, you have to write more. If you want to become a better cook, you have to cook more. If you want to become a better programmer, you have to write more programs.
A little hack you could steal to write more programs is to start by writing lots of small programs. This will allow you to crank up the amount of code you’re writing each day which would allow you to create a lot more programs.
However, a large number of small programs would not cover the scope of programming skills required to be considered a good programmer. At some point, it’s important to make the transition from writing lots of small programs to writing larger programs as this would reveal a new set challenges that would force you to become a better programmer.
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Final Thought
While these methods are great if you’re working in isolation to improve your programming skills, in the real world, it’s likely you’re going to be collaborating with other people. Hence , true growth comes when you step out of isolation and begin to work with others, especially those that are much smarter than you since you can adopt their methodologies to become a better programmer.
What skills do you need for coding?
The two primary skills all coders need are expression and problem-solving. Above all, you need to be able to come up with creative solutions to abstract problems. The good news is, by practicing the skills in the following list, you’ll also be improving these two essential skills.
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What 5 skills should all coders have?
1. Coding Language
You can’t be a programmer without becoming proficient in at least one coding language (for example, JavaScript or Ruby on Rails). You’ll also need to understand how to use crucial developer tools such as Git, GitHub, and more.
2. Self-reliance
Learning to code can be difficult, so you have to be able to stick it out. You can’t let impatience or frustration affect you. You need to learn how to ignore or minimize distractions, and not depend on others to solve technical problems.
3. Communication skills
Coders often work in teams that require them to write code so that other coders will understand and maintain. Furthermore, they need to be able to explain complex concepts to non-coders in relatively simple terms.
4. Understand machine stupidity
Computers don’t have common sense. They can’t think creatively or independently, and this can be surprisingly easy to forget. You’ll need to develop a mindset where you expect the computer only to do what you explicitly told it to do.
5. Abstract thinking
Since code can’t be physically observed or measured, you’ll need to learn how to visualize it in a way that forms a coherent whole. You’ll need to see things from different angles and draw analytical conclusions from things that may seem straightforward.
How can I improve my coding skills?
How you improve a specific skill depends on that skill’s nature and how it factors into your desired coding career. Once you’ve learned the basics of a programming language, you’ll want to practice as much as possible by writing code, solving problems, and studying the code others have written.
On the other hand, if you find you lack self-reliance, you’ll want to do things that will help you be more consistent. One strategy might be removing distractions from your learning space and deliberately working on coding problems that test your ability to remain focused.
