What is a programming habit that you wish you picked up earlier on?

Mine would definitely be less time coding and more time reading and debugging the code that I write. Most of my growth came from figuring out why something failed rather than succeeding at getting something to work.

What is one thing you wished you had known years ago?

Writing the README and documentation files before putting down even one line of code. If you cannot express how your new feature functions in simple English terms, then you shouldn’t bother implementing the code logic. You’ll save yourself countless hours in refactoring.

NexionSEO said:

Mine would definitely be less time coding and more time reading and debugging the code that I write. Most of my growth came from figuring out why something failed rather than succeeding at getting something to work.

What is one thing you wished you had known years ago?

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For me it would be learning to spend more time understanding the problem before writing code. Early on I'd jump straight into coding because it felt productive. Later I realized that an extra 20 minutes thinking through the architecture, edge cases, and data flow could save hours of debugging.

I'd also add learning to read other people's code. Some of the biggest leaps in my programming ability came from studying well written projects and seeing how experienced developers solved problems I hadn't even considered.

If I could, I would spend more time understanding the code before diving into implementation; doing so would save me time on debugging later on. Master the skills of structuring and laying out code.

NexionSEO said:

Mine would definitely be less time coding and more time reading and debugging the code that I write. Most of my growth came from figuring out why something failed rather than succeeding at getting something to work.

What is one thing you wished you had known years ago?

Click to expand...

I am by no way an experienced programmer, but when I am learning a language I like to write the commands that I am learning, because this helps with memory retention. That is one thing I wished I had been doing a couple of years ago

NexionSEO said:

Mine would definitely be less time coding and more time reading and debugging the code that I write. Most of my growth came from figuring out why something failed rather than succeeding at getting something to work.

What is one thing you wished you had known years ago?

Click to expand...

Not pursuing competitive coding. If i only focused on that i might be in a quant type position.