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What's one bit of professional advice you'd give yourself from one year ago?
Top comments (30)
Find what interests you and stick to it. My bootcamp was focused on full stack development and I had the HARDEST time shaking the mindset of " I have to know 30 languages really well, study them, practice them, understand them and implement them simultaneously.. HOW does anyone do that?!" Well short answer is they don't, not one person can know everything about any language. From the bottom to the top everyone has to look things up, remind themselves of certain things, ask questions and fail on a consistent basis. That's the only way in my opinion to truly be a successful developer :) I am now solely focused on front end development with minimal knowledge of backend and I couldn't be happier. Instead of being good at 30 things strive to be GREAT at maybe 4 or 5.
Don't try to do everything all at once.
This!
Celebrate ALL achievements, and I mean ALL. No matter how "big" or "small" they seem. Coding is difficult, and being kind to yourself can be the difference between giving up or persisting and succeeding.
Spent 3 hours trying to understand for loops, and still don't fully understand? CELEBRATE
Learned how to declare variables? CELEBRATE
Spent half a day debugging an issue just to find out you forgot a simple operator? CELEBRATE
Practice even what seems impossible.
Most importantly stay consistent and remain focused on my goals.
Mockups are NOT useless
Not at ALL! <3
Network, network, network!
And don't underestimate the power of small consistent habits!
Organize yourself with a schedule, focus on one activity at a time and take time to rest, distract yourself and get a good night's sleep.
Try to focus on one thing at a time.
Stop wasting your time watching hours and hours of video lectures to understand a topic that you can just learn by reading docs in an hour.