How to Become a Good Programmer Quickly in 2020

So, you have decided to become a great programmer in 2020. Great news: there are many resources and tools to help you propel your career for free.

All you need is structured guidance on not getting lost in the melting pot of courses, webinars, and schools. As well, it is necessary to fight a knack for procrastination and lack of confidence.

Here is a guide on how to pave your way to a programmer career fast in 2020, including aspect, namely: 

• Resources and schools
• Literature for references
• Communities
• Tools and playgrounds
• Tips on what to do when you are stuck

Let’s get started!

Learning Resources and Portals

The best resources for starters are: 

• W3Schools – the tool gives a great intro to different programming spheres from HTML to Python while breaking the study material into simple lessons.
• Code Academy – similarly to W3Schools, it provides knowledge on a wide range of programming languages, plus adds an excellent sandbox for practice.
• Free Code Camp – besides study materials on full-stack programming, this school gives access to real-life non-profit projects, where you can get your first experience.
• CodeSchool – offers a wide range of courses, where you can learn the basics of programming, as well as sharpen your skills by checking best practices.

These services contain easy tutorials, learning programs, and great visual tools to introduce you to coding basics. Maybe their knowledge is not enough to trust you with developing a corporate website like MLSDev, but that’s a good place to start.

If you need to sharpen your skills and continue education, you might like Udacity and their comprehensive program Nanodegrees, covering a full program from basic to advanced level.

Udemy is another number one resource when you need to study a skill fast. They have thousands of cheap courses on almost every topic related to programming.

CodeWars gives a chance to challenge your skills in real-life competitions with other programmers. Another program – Railsforzombies will help you improve your Ruby coding skills with a game.

Useful Books to Start or Continue a Programmer’s Career

As the resources like courses and webinars help you get the basis and specific knowledge on coding, self-reference literature will structure your understanding.

Here are five great books to learn the programmer craft:

1. The Complete Software Developer’s Career Guide

This is a non-technical book, sharing many tips on how to build a career, from how to go through an interview to where to seek information to fill the gaps.

2. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

Having read many code samples, the author shares his advice on what clean code is and how to achieve it.

3. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

This is a useful book for newbies and seasoned coders, sharing advice on code accuracy and coding productivity.

4. The Self-Taught Programmer

The book leads you through fundamentals to best programming practices, sharing the tips and tricks on how to become a professional coder.

5. The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

A great book about the history of programming, which doesn’t give any practical advice, casts light on the key figures in the industry, and helps you better accommodate software programming.

Code Communities, Conferences, & Meetups

Nothing can teach you better than talking to others.

That is why people gather in meetups and conferences worldwide. Online platforms for experience-sharing like StackOverflow also gain popularity. Therefore, to become a good programmer, you should know where to seek advice both in real and virtual life.

If you decide to speak to a professional programmer in life, there are apps to track upcoming events. Examples are Eventbrite and Meetup. Also, you may enter IT-communities in your city or follow IT-events on social media.

In case visiting an event requires too much time and effort, you may always join online communities. This is extremely helpful if you can’t deal with a nasty piece of code or seek a quick solution.

The great platforms to follow particular disputes, ask questions are:

• GitHub
• Stack Overflow
• Stack Exchange
• Quora
• Reddit
• Hacker News
• Producthunt

Note: For a programmer suffering from procrastination and lack of confidence, there is no better way to overcome these blocks than actively participate in the community’s life. There you are likely to find inspiration, answers to questions, professional tips, and notifications on open positions.

Tools and Playgrounds

When choosing which text editor to use for writing your code, you may rely on your taste, listen to friendly advice, or follow popular trends. Whatever your choice will be, some text editor classics are always worth trying.

We recommend checking Notepad ++, VIM, Atom, Visual Studio Code, Sublime. All of these editors have all the necessary functionality to write a good code, are easy to set up, and support most operating systems.

Also, to grow as a programmer, you need a lot of practice, and that’s easy to get with playgrounds or virtual editors, which you can easily access from anywhere.

The great playgrounds to pay attention to are Codeanywhere, Reply.it, Orion, Glitch, Codeopen, Cloud9.

Tips on How to Become an Excellent Developer

Now, since you have a list of resources, tools, and playgrounds to learn the craft and a list of communities to seek advice, you have almost everything to start building your programmer career.

Yet it would help if you kept in mind that sooner or later, everyone gets in a situation when they realize they are completely stuck and don’t know what to do next.

Are there ways to fight blockers like procrastination, lack of confidence, fear to move on, and zero motivation?

You may develop some behavioral habits that will help you evolve and get better from day-to-day.

These Tips will be your Guidelines:

1. Try to improve your code even if it works well: working code doesn’t mean it’s a good code. There’s always a place for improvement.
2. ALWAYS try to learn something new: even if you know your art, learning a new trick a day will help you always stay tuned
3. Read someone else’s code, especially if that’s a good code. This method allows you to learn how other programmers solved a problem. But it won’t help you become a better programmer if you don’t think about your own solution. Would you do it the same way? Or can you do it differently?
4. Collaborate with others: submitting code to be peer-reviewed means getting a lot of critical advice and seeing the downfalls of your coding. This way, you eliminate bad habits and make sure they don’t persist.
5. Learn the techniques, not code! Something new appears every day: a new programming language, a new tool, or a better way to code something. Therefore it is important to center attention on the fundamental rules of coding and techniques. This way, you’ll be better prepared for changes.

When doing everything right, the prospects for your career are great. As the tech world is developing fast, companies are looking for bright minds for IT staff augmentation like the MLSDev company offers their clients.

All in all, who knows, maybe the next book about key figures to change the world of technology will be about you.