DonTheDeveloper Podcast
DonTheDeveloper Podcast
3 Common Mistakes Aspiring Developers Make That Hold Them Back
I dive into three common mistakes that hold aspiring developers back. If you’re serious about breaking into tech, staying motivated, and leveling up your skills, this one is for you!
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Please stop trying to remember everything as a new developer. I'm going to talk about three mistakes I see a lot of junior devs make. We're just going to jump into the first one Again. You don't have to memorize everything as a new developer and I'll even see people create flashcards and especially try to remember syntax and they'll be hard on themselves when they haven't used it or haven't touched on it in a while and all of a sudden, they forgot it. It's like I should remember this. How many times have you gone through your coding journey or learned a code journey and you're like I should remember this? Why don't I remember this? It's like I remember that thought pattern when I was trying to become a developer and it is so self-defeating to feel like I'm making so much progress and then poof, it's gone, it's out of my mind. I just don't remember it. You don't have to remember everything as a developer. In fact, when you build projects, things will slowly start to get reinforced, especially when you're going through a ton of courses. Right, you're doing coursework and you feel like you're making a lot of progress. You're going through a lot of concepts and you feel like you should be remembering all those concepts. Well, you know, a good course is going to make you feel like you are, because it's a bit gamified. Maybe it's enticing, it's fun and it makes learning to code fun. But don't expect yourself to remember those concepts until you apply them and not just once, three times, five times, 10 times, 20 times.
Don Hansen:When I was a developer at my second developer position I've shared this story a few times. I'm going to share it again. I remember the developers there were brilliant with CSS. They were way above me and I'm like I want to become a really good developer who knows CSS. I spent a lot of time with JavaScript. Now let's get good with CSS. And I remember I bought a thousand page book. I wish I actually had it in front of me. It's in my closet somewhere. Haven't read a page, by the way, but I bought a thousand page book and I told my manager at the time about it. I'm like I really want to get good with this.
Don Hansen:These developers on this team are really good. They just out of nowhere they come up with these concepts and they can solve a lot of the CSS bugs that I've been trying to solve Like poof out of nowhere. It's like this is crazy. How do they know this stuff. And so I told him I'm like I want to sit down and I want to read this book and I'm going to try to learn as much as I possibly can because, like, maybe I'm just missing so much knowledge. It's like that's a waste of time. It's a complete waste of time. You're not going to remember any of it, or you're not going to remember most of it.
Don Hansen:He said the developers here just are good with CSS because they've made a thousand bugs and they've had to fix a thousand bugs. You're not going to learn the concepts really thoroughly until you start having to critically think about them, and encountering bugs with them is a fantastic opportunity for it to just get embedded in your mind just a little bit, just a little bit, and then it happens again and again and again and you start to remember it more that way. So please don't be hard on yourself just because you think you need to memorize everything. You don't, and you're going to waste energy and it's just going to stress you out just trying to memorize everything. So go to the fundamental concepts and then apply them and do it over and over and over again. Then these concepts will start getting reinforced. That's how you learn how to code. Please give yourself. Don't give yourself a hard time with this, because I see a lot of people really discouraging themselves with this, and we're just going to jump into the second one Junior developers get discouraged too easily.
Don Hansen:Sometimes it's this expectation that you're supposed to be this fantastic developer. I've been spending a year full time as a developer and I still feel like I'm not able to build anything meaningful. I still feel like I'm forgetting these concepts. I still feel like the developer that I met at this meetup is way better than me. That apparently told me that you know he just started and he knows react better than I do. Who gives a shit?
Don Hansen:I think a lot of this honestly comes from just comparing yourself to other people, which, if you feel like you are developing a bunch of anxiety, or you feel like you feel discouraged in your journey when you were learning to code because you were comparing yourself to other people, that's when you stop doing that and you literally just focus on going to your course and then building projects that are focused on kind of lining up with the types of jobs that you want to apply to you. It's okay to like reel back a bit. You don't have to talk to a ton of developers and just do solo work for a while to really build up your confidence, because when you start fleshing out projects, even if they're small, it starts building that confidence. A lot of junior devs just get discouraged way too easily and I think it comes from comparing yourself to other people. It's completely fine and I encourage you to look up different implementations and talk with other aspiring developers how they solved it. But if you do find yourself like really feeling anxious about it, you feel like you're just you're doing a bad job, you're not learning fast enough. I think you got to do a little bit more self-work. You got to build up your confidence. You got to take care of that anxiety and there are different ways to do that.
Don Hansen:But please try to be proud of the progress that you made and I think it's really easy when you've just been grinding and grinding, and grinding and you feel like, because I don't have a job right now, what has all of this been for? Because I don't have a job right now, I have failed, and this is where I really piss a lot of people off. But this is why I harp on these false expectations so much because I see it destroy developers' confidence and a lot of people will completely dismiss all the progress they made. And you could identify this progress by looking at your old projects, your old code, which probably sucks. You would probably refactor it. That's a big sign that you are growing. But a lot of people will put it all on this idea that because I don't have a job within a year, I have completely failed. Honestly, you might have just been going in the wrong direction and it hasn't been a completely linear direction. That's what most developers do, probably going to take you longer than you think it is. But always look at your old projects, look at your old code, refactor it a little bit. And again, when you can refactor it, when you can consolidate it, when you can compartmentalize it and start organizing your applications a little bit better and you can make your code a little bit more readable.
Don Hansen:If you would change things about your code, that's a huge sign that you are growing and the only like if you are growing, you will eventually get that job. There's a whole, you know, set of skills that you got to work on in the job search itself, but there are a lot of developers who aren't even challenging themselves. They're kind of just going through tutorials. They're going through courses and they are stuck in tutorial hell. They're not even building anything. We've talked about this before. But if you're not building, you're not reinforcing, and you at least, are continuing to grow through a little bit of coursework but a lot of project work.
Don Hansen:You would go back into your old code base, you would change things, you'd refactor. You are growing, you are moving in a positive direction and I think sometimes people just need to stop with the grind just for a few days and go back and look at their old code and look at how far they've come as a software engineer. This growth is. You know, this is a very, very long path. You are constantly growing as a software engineer and I think sometimes people just need to create a little bit more realistic milestones that aren't just get a job, because if it's just get a job, it's really really easy to dismiss all the growth and get discouraged and quit.
Don Hansen:A lot of people get discouraged with themselves when learning to code and I find that a lot of people when, or a lot of people that can move past, that are people that enjoy working on the stuff that they're building. They're like oh you know, now I finally see these foundational concepts that I've learned. That might have been a bit boring just solo learning those concepts. Now I see them applied to real applications. Now I'm starting to be able to build real stuff. Even if it's small projects, I'm building something that I could use, that other people can use, that are like small features of maybe some of the apps that I'm going to be working on at professional companies.
Don Hansen:When you start building stuff and you start getting those aha moments that things finally click, which they can take time. They really can take a long time to click, both with concepts and also like features you're trying to flush out with your projects. As a new developer, you don't know how long it's going to take for that concept to really click. It'd take weeks For recursion. It took like a month for me. I hate recursion. I still hate it, but I can do it just fine, like if I'm tested in interviews. I'm okay with recursion, but I'm not an expert. But it took me a long time for that concept to click and you're going to find that if you are getting discouraged with stuff that you're learning and it's not clicking.
Don Hansen:Oh, by the way, if you're trying to become a front end developer, I highly recommend you check out Scrimpa. I'm specifically talking about their front end developer career path. They have a fun, interactive way to learn how to code and become a web developer, and while that's true, that's not the main reason that I want to promote them. Honestly. The main reason is their curriculum is solid. There are a lot of curriculums that do not prepare people to actually be competitive in the market, and I've reviewed a ton of programs and to this day, it is still one of my favorites and one of the best front-end curriculums out there for self-taught developers. And they're backed by MDN, a leading and well-respected resource in the developer community, and I actually personally run my own mentees through the program to prepare them for front-end developer jobs. And if you choose to sign up via my affiliate link below in the description, you actually get 30% off if you sign up for a paid plan, but you have to sign up by the end of February to take advantage of that, because it expires after that.
Don Hansen:Anyways, check it out for yourself. What do you have to lose? Let's get back to the topic. One thing you're going to learn is that you need to trust a process and that if you continue to try to learn something, you continue to try to apply it, it eventually will click. And because you put a lot of effort here's the key thing you put a lot of effort into getting that concept to stick and apply. Now that's when this concept, when it does click it clicks hard it gets reinforced deeply because you've thought about this deeply. These concepts, everything that you're learning, start getting reinforced much more deeply when you critically think about them. You aren't just blindly going through a course. You are going to these concepts, you are saying them out loud, teaching that rubber, duck the concept, trying to apply it to something small, doing a couple coding challenges with it, especially for concepts that seem a bit tougher for you. When you apply it, apply it, apply it, think about it, think about it, think about it. Eventually things do start clicking. But that's the secret. It's to trust the process, that this stuff will eventually be learned over time through application and critically thinking about it. So I'll repeat this again Stop trying to memorize everything.
Don Hansen:Now the third thing that junior developers are making a big mistake on and this is a controversial one. I don't know why it is. People get mad at me for this one. You are fucking up royally if you are taking month-long breaks from coding. I'm worried when developers are taking over a week break from coding. But I see this a lot. I saw this a lot with coding boot camp grads. But I see this a lot with self-taught developers.
Don Hansen:But coding boot camp grads a perfect example like they'll kind of rush a bunch of that knowledge and it used to be like three month programs. They rush a bunch of that knowledge and then they just completely take a break. They're burned out or they only were learning to code because they thought it would get them a job. They never really found that love for coding and they're like you know what? I learned all this knowledge. Now I'm going to just apply for jobs for the next six months. They stop project work, they stop learning things. They just maybe do some DSA challenges and that's it. And all of that knowledge, all that money that they spent, just starts to float away. These concepts in your head become a little less easier to grasp. Your understanding starts loosening because it's already very shaky, because you rushed that knowledge and man, you just spent a lot of money and that knowledge never got reinforced. That's rough, but I see nowadays self-taught developers doing that as well.
Don Hansen:I think burnout is a really crucial thing to pay attention to and I understand taking breaks due to burnout. Most importantly, I understand taking breaks due to life circumstances, like emergencies that happen, death in the family, stuff like that. But but if you're going through a breakup, take a little bit of time to heal, but use that coding as a therapy or something. I think some of the excuses people come up with for their breaks, they kind of know it's a bullshit excuse and they take it anyways. I think there are emergencies. I think there are severe things you have to deal with in life that are good reasons to take a month off, especially like severe health issues and stuff like that. I want you to be honest with me. Of course, there are going to be a few people like yeah, I had a major life event, that break that you've taken, that like two week break, that month long break, that three month break did you have to take that break?
Don Hansen:Could you have, like, maybe coded two days a week for maybe like an hour or two each week to reinforce the stuff that you're learning? Could you have done that? Like, if we're being honest, I think you could have. Um, I made excuses in my past when I was learning to code where I'd get a little bit of burned out and I would just take too long off. I didn't do it too often, thankfully. But it's okay to have a break longer than a week.
Don Hansen:But when it starts becoming a pattern, that's when it's a problem. You are. This knowledge is way too fresh in the beginning to let your foot off the gas. It's way too fresh. And if the idea of coding at least once a week for two years is overwhelming for you, I'm not saying you're going to lose all your knowledge if you take a week break or two weeks break. But when it becomes a pattern, that's when I see people just their foundations just aren't solidified yet and their knowledge just goes to shit. They fail interviews, they're not able to build projects anymore, right, but if two years of coding at least once a week just sounds overwhelming to you, I had to really rethink this career choice. Overwhelming to you. I had to really rethink this career choice.
Don Hansen:One thing I think we need to recognize is burnout can happen due to a variety of things. Right, a lot of times burnout will. It can happen because, like you, had this milestone, this single solo goal of just getting a job, and you don't get a job and so you failed and it becomes really discouraging and then you take a break. You're like what's the point? These are the types of people that end up usually giving up. It's the people that recognize this as a shitty moment. Maybe my goals sucked, maybe I'm just discouraged with the job search, but I'm going to continue moving forward regardless of that.
Don Hansen:When you develop that mindset now, you are the type of developer that eventually lands that job, and a lot of junior developers are taking a lot of breaks and this knowledge it's just too fresh for you to be doing that. Please stop taking so many breaks and when you learn a new concept, apply it right away. Please apply it right away and then you'll revisit that concept later, because a lot of these fundamental concepts that you're learning are usually the building blocks of your projects. But I see too many people like, if I had to identify if someone is going to give up, it's usually big gaps in their learning to code journey, where they're not committing anything to GitHub or they're not really. They're not building anything, they're not really coding and reinforcing these concepts. Even people that just constantly are going through course after course after course and they're stuck in tutorial hell.
Don Hansen:You're not going to want to hear this, but I really think you aren't far behind people who are taking major breaks. If all you're not going to want to hear this, but I really think you aren't far behind people who are taking major breaks. If all you're going through is courses, you're not really learning this stuff. You're not applying it. You're getting dopamine hits to make you feel like you're actually growing. You're not growing. You gotta build. I understand at the beginning you don't really have enough fundamental knowledge to even build really, really basic apps in the beginning. You don't really have enough fundamental knowledge to even build really really basic apps In the beginning. You're going to spend more time in courses, but you have to apply the stuff. You have to do it consistently. You have to code consistently and if you can't keep up with that it's going to take a very, very long time if you ever even enter the industry. So a lot of people don't like when I talk about that, but it's a big red flag that I see in a lot of people that I know are probably eventually going to give up.
Don Hansen:I try to warn people they don't believe me that this excuse happened, this excuse happened, this event happened.
Don Hansen:I just I had to take off because this most of the reasons are just bullshit. But you have to identify that with yourself. Are you bullshitting yourself? Are you making excuses because you're discouraged with the learning to code journey? Are you actually being consistent enough to make it to that finish line? Or do you need to call yourself out on that and be critical of your habits and stop with the bullshit so that you actually can be consistent enough to land that job? You tell me. But please just start being honest with yourself with that. But I'd say these are three main mistakes. I see I wouldn't say main. These are three mistakes I see junior developers make. I'm probably going to create more videos like this and start identifying a lot of the just things that are holding people back, that cause people to quit, that get people discouraged, that get people lost in their journey. I'm probably going to create more videos like this. But if you have any opinions about anything I said, leave it in the comments below. I would love to hear them.