What’s the most underrated programming concept that every beginner should master?

Question

I often see discussions about the importance of learning frameworks and languages, but I feel like certain foundational concepts don’t get the spotlight they deserve.
For example, understanding 'event loops' in JavaScript completely changed the way I write code.

What’s a concept that you think is often overlooked but can make a huge difference for beginners? Feel free to share why you think it’s important and how it helped you

Answer 1

Most overlooked/underrated - how to test and debug

Not strictly a programming concept but touches on several concepts like edge cases.

But it is a skill that is often undervalued and only briefly touched on

Covers lot of sub-topics
👉 How to interpret compiler errors (can be language specific)

👉 Walking through code by hand and using scrap paper to track your variables and loop counters as they change

👉 Adding temporary print statements or console logging to track variables at key points in code

Bonus points for tieing those temporary lines to a global test boolean variable you can turn off or on

👉 Creating test cases to check all variations on inputs

👉 Testing edge cases for inputs which cover ranges, and checking starting and final iterations on loops

👉 Setting up automated test case checking (often needs language specific code library)

Answer 2

I rarely see asynchronous coding which allows multiple task to run at the same time...

Answer 3

Zvi if it was taught earlier in the process they might use it more and learn to use it for various purposes as well as grasp experience.
I took one of your earlier codes as an example ...
https://sololearn.com/compiler-playground/WdQF81soxXAS/?ref=app

Answer 4

BroFar but beginners wouldn’t be doing things that need async, right? Isn’t is just used for things that take a while like an api request or updating a database?

Answer 5

Just master a language first like Python then practice problem solving or go for development

Answer 6

Programmingconcepts