Common mistakes for beginners

Question

I wanted to know what mistakes beginners often make. This past month, I have completely immersed myself in learning programming. I do not attend a traditional school, and am afraid of devloping bad habits in coding I may pick up online. That being said; is there a way to avoid picking up any bad habits?

thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I think a common issue, especially if you're learning on your own, can be discouragement. Writing good programs isn't that easy, and the errors can be cryptic (if not downright nonsensical, like when a small syntax error confuses the compiler, and you get 3 pages of errors).

Be patient with yourself, and give yourself breaks, but always come back to it. Fresh eyes make a huge difference in debugging.

Also, you know exactly what you're doing right now... but in 6 months? After several other projects? Treat your program like you're helping your friend solve the problem, those explanations will be gifts to yourself when you go back to an old code to extend its functionality.

Answer 2

My common mistakes was afraid to continue and when I do, I am afraid to challenge myself to do more in improving myself which results to drawback, to avoid them I tend to sacrifice some learning time from a no time schedule so I could be inline in learning updates and face challenges along the line when the time comes.