30 Important Points From 30 Months of My Career as a Programmer

Some say that experience is the best teacher.

But what is experience?

Is the time and events that we have passed can be called experience?

No!

Experience is a lesson taken from events in life that we use to become a better person.

So even though I’ve experienced a lot of events, but not getting better, it means we have no experience. For example, if you are a poker player and you have attended many poker tournaments, it doesn’t always mean that you are a skillful player. You have to get more practice, especially if you want to be a more professional one. You can start from a scratch, use your strategy and beat the opponent. Other than wasting your time on such useless activity (where it actually takes more time), poker will give you a much more experience, like various strategy,  decision making, and so on.

Talking about experience, we’ve come close to a conclusion where you can’t simply say you are a skillful programming if you haven’t try to work in a office. See, i have worked for more than 2 years in 2 different work office.

And these are 30 important points from my 30-month career as a programmer:

1. When you want to start your career as a programmer but confused about the way, then the answer is only one: just start.
2. Programming is not a matter of programming languages, but about solving life solutions with a programming language. So don’t be bothered about which language you should choose. Pick one, learn it.
3. The basic foundation of every programming language is the same — variables, data types, arrays, objects, operators, conditionals, looping, and functions.
4. When we stop learning, it means quitting the world of programming.
5. In the programmer’s world, that change always happens on every line. One thing that hasn’t changed is the change itself.
6. Want to be a programmer? The main motivation, not money. You will be disappointed by the start. The money will come alone, according to your ability. We do programming because we love it.
7. The text editor is the main weapon of the programmer. So, choose the right because the text editor is a friend until the end of the programmer’s life.
8. Use vim for the best investment.
9. Are You a Programmer? You must control terminal. Like learning tmux, learning vim. Now 80% of my time is coding. I am in the terminal. The rest, read the documentation, test the app or the web, usually using a browser.
10. Use Unix os, like Linux or osx. If you use windows, like there are unclear errors, whether it’s a myth or reality, but I feel it myself. Instead of the error that only happens in Windows, switch immediately to Linux or OSX.
11. So the programmer must be good at giving names; the programmer’s life is full of names. Name variables, classes, properties, functions, and so on.
12. As much as you read the tutorial on various programming websites, it looks like we are learning, but not really if you have never practiced it.
13. Fundamental Programming is First and Foremost.
14. In the world of programmers, there are many tools that will help programmers work. The programmer is surrounded by the same tools. Tools can indeed help but can backfire for beginners. He thought the make tools were easy; why should it be difficult to learn from the start. Case in point is git. It’s good to use git GUI like GitHub Desktop, Git Kraken, but it’s the turn to use the command line, you can’t.
15. If you are learning to program, don’t use the build-in function programming language yet. It’s better to make the function yourself. Later, when it is produced / when working, then it can be used to speed up work.
16. It is important to understand and be able to practice sorting and searching algorithms. Not only used when coding, but during job interviews, you will be asked about this. Has years of programming experience, can’t answer this, it won’t be considered.
17. Many completed the challenge on sites such as codewars or hackerrank, worth it.
18. Want to be known as a pro programmer? Start making online content. Such as copywriting, make videos, podcasts, and so on.
19. Join the community, don’t just make it a place to ask questions, contribute, give solutions, provide knowledge.
20. To contribute. The best way to manage stress.
21. There are fellow programmers on the team who are better at us? Don’t feel inferior. Approach, take knowledge.
22. Feel unworthy of contributing? Try it first. It’s just a delusion trying to frighten us.
23. When coding, always remember that we are coding not just for the computer to understand, our colleagues must understand the code we write, the user must understand what we make.
24. Are you a night programmer? Who can only work at night? Not again. Not good for health.
25. When coding stuck, I can’t find a solution. Rest first, stay away from the laptop first if you can, sleep first. Sometimes, instead, we find a solution hehe.
26. Before typing the code, first, make the solution. Then find out how to write the code, Confused on how to write it? Search Google, read the documentation. The documentation is the programmer’s book — the programmer’s reference place.
27. When coding, stay away from cellphones, turn off the sound, never open social media. The programmer needs hyper-focus.
28. O, product manager! You have to understand when adding a new feature, which means it will add a new bug. There is no perfect program. So think carefully.
29. Programming is not the same as building a house.
30. Don’t ever plan everything from the start. Try to plan a bigger structure. Don’t ever plan for details because it will never be the same, aka a waste of time.