Although by no means I am an expert. This is the advice that I would like to give my self back when I started to learn coding , and by following these tips I could see myself being clearly much further than I am today. So it would be helpful for someone who just started with their coding journey.
I started coding after I saw Varun mayya's video on 21 skills for 21 days in which he said to learn the MERN stack ,and I also knew that JS is the way to go as I was a discord member of teamtanay . so I spend all my savings and got an entry level laptop as soon buying stuff online was allowed during the lockdown.
So that the context is out of the way here are the tips.
Start with the very basic (HTML & CSS).
After getting my brand new laptop I dove head first and started learning the MERN stack. I got a course of around 50+ hours , I thought of it as a book or a series I have to rush through as I was watching the course I was understanding everything and was also having a lot of fun coding along the instructor . But after the course was done I was asked by a developer friend of mine to code a simple JavaScript BMI calculator and I wasn't able to do it !
after this happened if I was any smarter I would've focused on learning ,the core fundamentals of web dev which is HTML,CSS AND JS .
But instead I decide to go for trendy and cool projects with react . So this is the first thing I would say to my Past self and a beginner dev . Focus on learning HTML CSS and JS in some depth ,by no means you have to be an expert in it but just enough to navigate your way through a tricky situation . For that I would recommend Tanay Pratap's 1st course for various reasons that I would explain in depth below, the course is small with videos being 10-15min and you would be done in a day with hosting your own very first website.
This course is made to spark your interest in learning.
Make small projects and DONT copy!.
As I explained in my previous point that I rushed through the courses just for the sake of completing them. And after that what I did was make cool projects that I see on Youtube and just code along with the video and thus learned nothing .
This is the second advice I would give myself and a beginner dev that focus on small simple projects and try to enjoy the small wins like adding a feature or fixing a bug I used to compare myself with younger devs without realizing that they learned for a lot longer then me so comparing myself with them wasn't fair to me as I just started. And due to this unfair comparison I pushed myself to make cooler projects and hence not learning anything about coding in the process .
Get comfortable reading DOCS
When I started coding I would never used to read docs and thus only make/do things only if there was a Youtube video explaining it . Reading docs is a very useful skill as a developer and I wish I started doing it sooner rather than later I know it can be tricky and a hassle when you get started but trust me it isn't as difficult as it looks .
By going through docs not only you can make better projects but you also get the confidence to take on any projects and figure things out on your own! , this is a very important mindset to have for anything in life but especially for programming and web dev.
Playing the Game is more important then Winning and Losing
When we copy the code and use it, we don't practice anything. We might get the desired outcome, but the long term result is regretful. -Tanay Pratap.
This one is a mindset change rather than tactical one. But this is the most important skill I thing I gained from watching and listening to Tanay sir's teaching as I wrote in my previous points I would rush through my courses and thus waste time watching them rather than actually learning.
It was just an illusion of learning.
The main philosophy of Tanay sir's teaching is treating learning as a game and playing the game is the only thing that matters not wining nor losing . If you cheat you lose even though you win.
When you get in this mindset you'll have way more fun learning anything and you will obviously learn more than just watching courses . How you may ask? before this you are in the mindset of having to complete the project only then you have "done something" so you don't get any dopamine hit when solving challenges that is required to get those project done so what you subconsciously do is to take the easiest way out that is watching the tutorial or copy pasting code from Github and/or stackoverflow. This doesn't help you in your learning at all.
But in the mindset of treating learning as Gaming . Solving every small challenge gives you pleasure/dopamine hit every time you solve a small issue or add a small feature ,which makes you feel good so you keep on doing it more and more which is absolutely essential if you plan on getting good at anything, you cant get good without genuine interest in learning ,and this mindset-shift solves that problem and gets you interested in learning and solving problems rather than making projects just for the sake of it or to get a job.
Don't give up when it gets hard.
It takes 90% of the time to do the last 10% of the work .
What I used to do is pick a very cool and robust project without having a understanding of the fundamental skills and then I rush through the video like a chore and then give up at the very end when it gets challenging and I don't get a dopamine hit from the project and it starts to feel boring.
This happened with me a lot especially at the very end of projects when it starts to get complex.
So if you are beginner dev I would recommend making super simple projects and adding on top of it rather than starting with a very complex project.
Work on your own progress & stop comparing.
Comparing my self to other guys who were much further than me was a big driver for me to work hard when I got started with learning to code although there are a lot of great benefits of having a very smart and ambitious peer group there is also some negatives.
When I started coding I use to see people much younger than me being very good at code and working on very cool Projects. This was one of the main reason I started rushing through the content of courses and got in a toxic habit of watching tutorials 8+hours a day for months without absorbing much information, and this was what lead to all the other points that I talked about in this blog .
So if you are a new dev or a #codenewbie don't compare yourself to the folks who have been learning and doing this for a while it is just an unfair comparison and this topic is very serious as it can get some folks depressed.
So if you've made it till here I hope you'll find this tips helpful or at the very least Entertaining. Let me know what you think about this article. I hope this tips will help you with your learning, and hopefully save your time ;) so you don't make these mistakes.
Thank's for reading 🖤