A couple of ways to learn coding better (not faster)
Since this is my first post, it may be appropriate to introduce myself briefly. My name is Guilherme, born and raised in Brazil, and moved to the USA back in 2008 to study MUSIC, yeah… that is right… Music. Since then, I achieved my bachelor’s, master’s and am about to finish my DMA in Double Bass Performance.
About three years ago, I became interested in software engineering, and the recent decline of the gig industry certainly gave me the push. But enough about me, I am here today to share the takeaways I noticed from my yet short journey in CODING.
1. Connections
A good number of new developers have backgrounds other than a Computer Science degree, which shouldn’t mean any less. In fact, it might be advantageous to oneself and its future clients(or employees). With each new concept, learn to apply it to your comfort zone, so I would think of ways to map an array with composers and iterate over it to have just composers from the Romantic Period. For instance, the method find would be if I wanted to find the first composer that fits the description.
In short, make associations as much as you can to build up your understanding of the concept you are trying to learn.
2. Convert it to spoken language
I know most people would say “DUUUHHH,” but honestly. If you speak more than one language, you might notice how the syntax would work differently in your native language. As for me, it would be Portuguese, I already saw that while learning RUBY, it would be best to only make associations in English, as Portuguese is more of a Romantic language [look at that, I used that word twice already!]. A simple example would be <House.address> which would easily translate to House’s address, but in Portuguese, I would have to write “The address of the House.”
3. Pseudocode
Another “DUUUHHHH” for many people, but in a recent podcast interview (https://www.hanselminutes.com/761/programmatic-problem-solving-with-nicole-archambault) called Programmatic Problem Solving with Nicole Archambault, she mentions how in the beginning coders will spend sometime pseudo-coding and soon they won’t approach that way anymore. She is a strong believer in keeping this feature all the way through one’s career.
4. Doodling
YESSS that is right!!! Draw your Domain Models, and with each method, draw the path your code is taking. This will help you envision the process the syntax is doing.
Thank you for reading, and I promise to keep updating this entry as I come through new ways of better learning to code.
