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How do you self-teach yourself more complex software dev skills> (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by TerryTPlatypus@beehaw.org to c/ask_experienced_devs@programming.dev

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What advice would you give to someone who is trying to teach themselves software development skills? I'm doing that right now, and I'm finding it easy to understand, yet difficult to implement in computer code. I want to move onto more advanced stuff, but I feel that I don't have enough experience quite yet. What skills/courses would you recommend I take? How did you get better on your coding journey? Any tips to make the process go faster? Thanks in advance!

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[–] jmk1ng@programming.dev 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

BUILD SOMETHING.

Learning concepts without the ability to apply them are essentially useless.

Get your hands dirty and build something that would be valuable to you and solve a problem for yourself.

Don't get hung up on doing it "right". Focus on making it work. Don't worry about how it'll work for a million users. Right now your focus is on making it work for one user.

As you go you'll hit walls. Research how to get past them and keep going. Again, you're going to make mistakes. DO NOT GET HUNG UP ON THIS.

Making mistakes is part of the journey. Even the best software engineers in the world rarely get things right their first try. It's part of the process.

[–] Mesa@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

I think this is the best answer. You can follow tutorials and read others' code all you want, but until you have a real-world application of what you're learning, the information you're consuming might as well be lost to the cosmos.

If you want structure, there are plenty of courses on YouTube that can start you out with fundamental knowledge; but as you continue to learn, taking on your own projects increasingly becomes the most efficient way to develop as a developer.

And, of course, there is a place for reading other people's code. I just think that this "method" is popularly miscredited as the way to learn coding, rather than as a tool to fortify your skills.