Myths Stopping You From Being A Developer

Myths Stopping You From Being A Developer

Being an Electronics and Communication undergrad student the toughest decision was me to get into programming and coding. I took the decision to code in my second year but got serious in my third year.

After the decision, now it was time to explore and clear some general questions which were,

  • Which language I should start from?
  • Where to study?
  • How to study?

With these questions there were some strange thoughts and options also, I came across which can mislead or lower the confidence of any beginner.

After being into coding/development/programming for about 1.5 years all I can say is there are a lot of myths floating around. So, in today's blog I'll be talking about these myths and justify them how it's totally irrelevant to even give a thought on them.

mythvsreality

The first one is a very general myth which demotivates every new beginner and it is:

I Am Not From CS So I Cannot Code!

The above thought has to be the biggest myth we come around. I believed in this too. Being in electronics I thought I have to do something in it, I cannot do programming.

How will I do both? How will I compete with people who are studying CS as majors.

Now lets clear this myth………

Literally anyone who has interest in programming can learn programming better than most of the CS students. The only thing you need to do is, be determined and regular in doing it. You will gradually start loving programming and developing. Talking about myself I love spending my time on coding and developing. I started it gradually with learning Java language then moved onto learning Web Dev. Now I am passionate about programming only and want to make my career in it.

The important thing is to decide that okay I want to code and I'll make a career in it then fully give everything into it. Be efficient in time management because you have to manage both your majors and coding. What I did was study enough electronics so that my marks does't go down but not that much also that I become a topper in electronics.

Next myth has to be,

I am learning by seeing the tutorial videos!

Many of us start studying programming through online tutorials and it has code along projects. We think by doing this we are learning the technology.

tutorial

But this is not the case. To actually learn and gain confidence we have to make self projects. The best recommendation I have in this case is as soon as you learn something even very small build a project. For example you started web development and learnt HTML make a basic page with forms , then learn CSS and you can style your webpage, learn Javascript and add effects and make it interactive. Many believe you cannot make until you learn each of HTML,CSS and JS but its completely wrong. Even a small project teaches us a lot of things which we cannot learn just by seeing tutorials.

Language 'A' has a better future!

The biggest confusion when getting into coding is which language to start and this questions also has lots of myths about them. Almost everyone you talk to will tell you learn language A, because it has a better future as compared to another language. Or a particular language is outdated and is not used in present times. But the truth is there is nothing like you have to study a particular language only.

The moment you trust those you'll not be able to learn!

We can study any language of our choice. We just need to focus on it completely and don’t make the mistake of quitting and switching to another language in between. Any gig you start, give it a bit of time before switching.

Programmers out there are way better than me!

This is one I just don’t understand, as soon as you write your first code or build your first project you are a developer i.e. there is no level of skill to consider. I’ve been programming for 1.5 years and I’m better now than I was last week. You keep improving and learning. Always remember every developer once wrote "Hello World". So, give it time and effort and you you'll be as good as anyone out there. Don't compare yourself to others. Get inspiration from them. You see their success but not the time and effort that has gone behind it.

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Okay so these are the most common myths I feel or heard of in my time as a developer till now. Share in comments about the myths you have come across or heard about and how do you think we can clear them.

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