The worst thing you can do while learning programming is comparing your learning to others, don't do that guys, instead compare your yesterday knowledge to your present. It will bring a lot of positivity and after sometime you will find yourself performing better and writing good quality solutions.
That's exactly what I experienced a while ago. Everyone was using Docker. And I simply couldn't do sh*** with it. Every time I heard about Dockerfiles, Container, Images, Docker compose etc. I got frustrated because when I got my hands on it, I couldn't fit my project into using docker. And I saw all the people diving into docker and after a brief time they understood it. I just felt dumb. I was comparing them with myself. Just when I opened the Docker documentation and started by absolutely 0, read everything from the beginning and made the silly examples... Suddenly everything made sense. And when I realized that isolating my progress to others made me start with a fresh mind and focus on my improvement. In the past, I didn't understand what an image in docker means... Today I know... ;) And I'm proud of it :P And all of u reading this... You should be proud of every single piece of progress you make throughout your journey. Stop watching at others and feel dump... Because you definitely aren't!!!
comparing your learning and current skill to others is bad, but comparing the quality of your work with others is nessessary for improvement. those who can look at their bad craft, recognize it sucks compared to others, and can still feel okay about that will always have an edge because they can integrate other people's solutions into the workflow. people should have less pride in their work and more pride in their ability to not be dragged down by their mistakes and lack of quality.
I swear to God I have this video in my favourites list and right after it another one from the same channel that’s a 4:15 long and just noticed and thought the same thing, indeed much appreciated
I like the point made about programming being a skill/craft. Its definitely something that resonated with me when I read "Be so good they can't ignore you". Great video btw
I'm so scared of making mistakes, having errors in my code and just feeling stupid, that I just can't write code. I'm always looking for tutorials to write perfect flawless code and don't ever have to feel that way again. This exactly what you described... I'm in the wrong approach since 2018... More than five years already and didn't learn anything. Five years of watching tutorials, reading books and sometimes, just sometimes writing code, not even from myself just copy and paste. I still do that at work, just copy paste the solutions. This wrong approach is the reason why I know I'm not a real programmer, I have seen real programmers and I know I'm very far away of being one of those. (Don't even mention impostrome syndrome and that crystal mentality shit). I'm gonna just accept failure and I'm going to feel stupid but I'm gonna take the real approach now, the one you mentioned and I'm gonna became a real programmer now after five years. Thanks you very much.
I totally agree with this. I started my first Discord bot more than 3 years ago and I was always saying "I just need to finish this thing and then it's all perfect" but you can never achieve perfection. I rewritten that bot more than 6 times and I've always improved it by a lot and there are still a ton of things to do and improve. So just don't focus on making things perfect because they'll never be, focus on making them maintainable at least though ^^
to be completely honest, this channel is the best thing i've found in a while. I just rlly love the editing and the way he says his opinions on programming.
I’m currently in the middle of a software engineering coding bootcamp and your videos have really shifted how I approach my learning mentally. Appreciate it so much! Would like a vid or post on your recommendation for beginner projects!
I recall learning C++ at uni. They gave me this 1500 page book. I wanted to learn game programming so I found one by Michael Dawson which was 250 pages. By page 150 you knew the concepts and the rest was augmenting the knowledge. That book set me up for the rest of my life as a developer with simplicity in mind and a method to learning coding. Master the fundamentals, the same as basic maths (arithmetic, fractions, algebra). The rest will fall in to place with practise.
absolutely!! Too large volumes, too much info when you are new or not even new, just medium, just average causes fear, anxiety, paralysis, or just unproductive. Firstly learn the essentials from the best source possible, apply during the process, at the right time comes, you will seek for more resources or more details naturally as you come across problems.. if you care.
The MOST IMPORTANT thing in programming is embracing failure. Write as much shit code as you can and throgh failure you learn the most. No one is ever perfect.
I always hear the phrase "perfect practice makes perfect", which in theory sounds like a good idea, but in practice could make you scared to even get started at all until you've found the perfect way to do whatever you're trying to do. But for some things, there is no perfect way to do things. Programming, at its core, is an iterative process. You won't know how to optimize your solutions and write cleaner code until you've done exactly like you said in the video, just get started and come back to it later!
I refactor my old projects daily. I don't know why. I feel proud of them. When I learn new stuffs such as hook or callback..., I come back to my old projects and improve them.
As someone who draws a lot, I completely agree with your comparison. My aproach to programming is the same as with art, I try doing stuff that is WAY out of my league, finish the project most times kinda half-assed but at the end I learn a lot of stuff. Also, comparing to others is a double edged sword, some people look at others thinking "They are so much better than me" but you really should be looking as "There is so much that I can learn from them".
I completely agree about design patterns etc. When I was starting my real programming journey as an intern a year ago I could not understand shit about design patterns, architectures etc. but I was forced to learn it and do it this way. Probably it was more of a wasted time, because I just felt at that point I just needed more experience overall, building apps to then understand the architectures because it made zero sense to me at that time
Great video, and awesome visuals, for someone who is a self aspired web developer I think it’s a good idea to start off good, and I haven’t even done much with code yet! this video is relatable
Thank you, this is wisdom that most people and teachers don't ever say. You want to keep practicing and making more stuff, and that's the advice that everyone says. But like you mention, if you're writing things inefficiently, incorrectly, etc, but keep doing THAT, then you're not improving. Just like the person who keeps trying to create art but doesn't learn how to draw people with proper anatomy. Compared to art though, I feel like it's harder to learn the "right" ways to do things because everything is so situational. That's part of the fun, to be sure, but it also makes it tricky. But I guess the solution would be "Read lots of (well-written) code"?
Having learned a second language to fluency and an instrument to a high level, I feel better hearing programming is more like that process than studying law lol.
2:00 First off, the function only returns one of two values, so it can just be bool. This can make the function be inlined better and just return the result of the expression (age > 60). Secondly, if you need to check if age is nonzero, and you must return a string, the current code is redundant. If you do nothing outside the if(age) control path, the if statement should not exist. Also what's with the random semicolons?
this advise I good for anything one wants to learn, it's literally the direct->drill cycle (do the thing you want to learn figure out what you're bad at then drill it, repeat) improving upon your old work is a good example of copy type drilling.
This is actually the wrong mindset if you want to become a professional programmer. The question to ask is not "how can I improve this". The right question to ask is "how much are they going to pay me to improve this".
Hey, I really appreciate these videos as a complete beginner trying to be a software engineer in the future your videos help me feel less anxious about programming because it can get overwhelming. I would really appreciate if you could make a more specific “beginners guide” or “guide for dummies” roadmap of what we should learn/do to gain the knowledge and skills to be a software engineer
I am a natural perfectionist, and I don't think that's a bad thing after years of being me and getting things wrong lol it means that more often than not, I know what kind of outcome would be satisfying, but, now with experience, I've embraced iteration. In fact, I'm so happy I found the concept of iteration. I would have been really unhappy in life without it. 😅
my friend made a simple todo app in the first year of collage then he just added more features and gimmicks to todo app that it he learned so much in three years that me who made about many projects and countless half finished projects have never will learn he just reflected on his code and made it fast by using the ds he used inked list for goals lists and day list and so many ideas like he even added the chat gpt into it like if we are too lazy to add previous tasks it just add the tasks to the lists and it even f**king have Bluetooth connection for turning off the lights when it is studying time and turning off fan to awake him up at the morning coded in react native it's like i wasted so much by just making so many projects I could have taken just two or three projects and added good features to it
Oh nice that's exactly what I've doing been doing for the past week making a math app. Taught me real nice lessons on like what i can and can't do, what's making it immediately crash, how to send variables to different classes, and why can't i sleep? Whoops that was a different kind of problem
Exactly, a good way of thinking is always challenging yourself, want to make a game? Do it! Through trial and error you'll learn. This works with any concept in your mind. Make chess, make an AI, make whatever you desire, but remember, you'll very likely finish your goal. Even if it might be a little bit messy & complicated. You now know what to do better when coding your next project.
that's another thing i was thinking about just yesterday. i want to learn a newer programming language and try different approaches, so i chose rust and i went quite far in the book. i could continue learning rust and building stuff with it, but it would probably take a lot of time to get used to, which is not a problem for me. i am ready for it. OR i could learn a simpler language like Go, and try more stuff using it. I think it's fair to assume that my output would be more in volume with Go. On the other hand, it's better to start early with Rust, and I could learn Go anyway at some point because it's supposed to be easier. Perhaps i am thinking too much about it lol Either way, I can't wait to finally be done with my finals and trying some dumb projects in the summer. Thanks for the encouraging video
I did that when I was making a project. I created a navbar and included it using "require" from PHP. I noticed I was requiring it every time I created a new page, that and I was also requiring bootstrap links. So I changed everything, created just one page that required these two things and included the rest based on the user's behavior
The continuation of this is don’t refactor everyone else’s code just because it does not match your style. Refactor as you go. If refactoring is on your todo list you’re doing it wrong.
the worse thing about learning programming is watching a lot of tutorials and ending up in tutorial hell. Taking small projects, such as building a website for friends, churches, or small business is in my opinion one of the best ways to learn.
Huh, so pretty much what I have been doing. I think the biggest learning experience that got me down this route was going to a hackathon thinking I was top dog and figuring out that I was complete ass and tits instead
The worst thing you can do while learning programming is comparing your learning to others, don't do that guys, instead compare your yesterday knowledge to your present. It will bring a lot of positivity and after sometime you will find yourself performing better and writing good quality solutions.
You should do it. But don't think "I'm so bad compared to them" but "What can I do to improve my code"
Your words are gold
That's exactly what I experienced a while ago. Everyone was using Docker. And I simply couldn't do sh*** with it. Every time I heard about Dockerfiles, Container, Images, Docker compose etc. I got frustrated because when I got my hands on it, I couldn't fit my project into using docker. And I saw all the people diving into docker and after a brief time they understood it. I just felt dumb. I was comparing them with myself. Just when I opened the Docker documentation and started by absolutely 0, read everything from the beginning and made the silly examples... Suddenly everything made sense. And when I realized that isolating my progress to others made me start with a fresh mind and focus on my improvement.
In the past, I didn't understand what an image in docker means...
Today I know... ;) And I'm proud of it :P
And all of u reading this... You should be proud of every single piece of progress you make throughout your journey. Stop watching at others and feel dump... Because you definitely aren't!!!
comparing your learning and current skill to others is bad, but comparing the quality of your work with others is nessessary for improvement. those who can look at their bad craft, recognize it sucks compared to others, and can still feel okay about that will always have an edge because they can integrate other people's solutions into the workflow. people should have less pride in their work and more pride in their ability to not be dragged down by their mistakes and lack of quality.
@@Rin-qj7ztagreed 🙏👍
the video length is much appreciated
I swear to God I have this video in my favourites list and right after it another one from the same channel that’s a 4:15 long and just noticed and thought the same thing, indeed much appreciated
π
Still too long, luckily I set it to 1.5x speed 😉
ngl I watched the video because of that and was about to comment
I like the point made about programming being a skill/craft. Its definitely something that resonated with me when I read "Be so good they can't ignore you". Great video btw
I'm so scared of making mistakes, having errors in my code and just feeling stupid, that I just can't write code. I'm always looking for tutorials to write perfect flawless code and don't ever have to feel that way again. This exactly what you described... I'm in the wrong approach since 2018... More than five years already and didn't learn anything. Five years of watching tutorials, reading books and sometimes, just sometimes writing code, not even from myself just copy and paste. I still do that at work, just copy paste the solutions. This wrong approach is the reason why I know I'm not a real programmer, I have seen real programmers and I know I'm very far away of being one of those. (Don't even mention impostrome syndrome and that crystal mentality shit). I'm gonna just accept failure and I'm going to feel stupid but I'm gonna take the real approach now, the one you mentioned and I'm gonna became a real programmer now after five years. Thanks you very much.
Never too late to do it the "right way"!
Hahah. Failure, love seeing my competitors struggling
@@JohnStockton7459what your purpose for doing that
How is it going by now? Did you feel any improvement over this year?
How are you now?
I totally agree with this. I started my first Discord bot more than 3 years ago and I was always saying "I just need to finish this thing and then it's all perfect" but you can never achieve perfection. I rewritten that bot more than 6 times and I've always improved it by a lot and there are still a ton of things to do and improve. So just don't focus on making things perfect because they'll never be, focus on making them maintainable at least though ^^
"Practice makes better"
"Perfect is the enemy of good"
This channel never disappoints. Short, informative, funny and straight to the point. It's definitely worth the content and my time 🍞👍
to be completely honest, this channel is the best thing i've found in a while. I just rlly love the editing and the way he says his opinions on programming.
I’m currently in the middle of a software engineering coding bootcamp and your videos have really shifted how I approach my learning mentally. Appreciate it so much!
Would like a vid or post on your recommendation for beginner projects!
Yes, you're certainly correct. If we want to level up our coding skills, we need to keep up the build-reflect-improve loop
Forget the REPL, let's get some BRIL up in here
"you look back and ask how can i improve this" sums me up
Thanks man! So spot on, valuable and humble, down to Earth delivery. Thanks dude for your help.
I recall learning C++ at uni. They gave me this 1500 page book. I wanted to learn game programming so I found one by Michael Dawson which was 250 pages. By page 150 you knew the concepts and the rest was augmenting the knowledge. That book set me up for the rest of my life as a developer with simplicity in mind and a method to learning coding. Master the fundamentals, the same as basic maths (arithmetic, fractions, algebra). The rest will fall in to place with practise.
hmm, if you're talking and 'Programming, Principles and Practice using C++', that book is actually incredible
absolutely!! Too large volumes, too much info when you are new or not even new, just medium, just average causes fear, anxiety, paralysis, or just unproductive. Firstly learn the essentials from the best source possible, apply during the process, at the right time comes, you will seek for more resources or more details naturally as you come across problems.. if you care.
@@Bayo106but its 1313 pages long : /
Thank you so much for this content. It applies to everything not just programming. God bless.
The MOST IMPORTANT thing in programming is embracing failure. Write as much shit code as you can and throgh failure you learn the most. No one is ever perfect.
Yep. Needing to "feel ready" before starting is a problem. Just need to fail forward 😅
I always hear the phrase "perfect practice makes perfect", which in theory sounds like a good idea, but in practice could make you scared to even get started at all until you've found the perfect way to do whatever you're trying to do. But for some things, there is no perfect way to do things. Programming, at its core, is an iterative process. You won't know how to optimize your solutions and write cleaner code until you've done exactly like you said in the video, just get started and come back to it later!
Your content is outstanding.
Seeing your old code and rewriting in much simpler way is the best approach i have ever seen
I refactor my old projects daily. I don't know why. I feel proud of them. When I learn new stuffs such as hook or callback..., I come back to my old projects and improve them.
You don't even know how much I needed to hear this right now, bro. Thanks for this.
These 3 mins felt like hours of knowledge ❤️🔥
Failure without analysing why you failed is useless. Failure with ego is failure. Failure without ego is improvement.
As someone who draws a lot, I completely agree with your comparison. My aproach to programming is the same as with art, I try doing stuff that is WAY out of my league, finish the project most times kinda half-assed but at the end I learn a lot of stuff. Also, comparing to others is a double edged sword, some people look at others thinking "They are so much better than me" but you really should be looking as "There is so much that I can learn from them".
As a programming rookie, its a pleasure to watch you videos, great contents!
Love your videos! Please keep creating.
Much appreciated. Kaizen is very underrated. Thanks and stay strong 💪
I really like watching your videos. Keep it up :D
Literally top notch content, keep it coming bro !!!
All the videos you made could feed my brain daily .. thanks
Good content, thanks Bigbox 🎉
Love your videos as always bigbox! Keep up the great work ❤
What a great feeling it is, to see a new video by bigbox
As a aisan, kai zen is not a philosophy, it just a word which mean improve
2:00 “if age” does nothing for the function, the returned ‘old’ or ‘young’ isn’t written
An amazing video! I have 1 and 2. Now I need to read some else's code.
Priceless video!!!
I love your videos!! I've watched all of them!!❤
Agree. I learned the most by "writting shitty code" and refactoring other ppl code
I completely agree about design patterns etc. When I was starting my real programming journey as an intern a year ago I could not understand shit about design patterns, architectures etc. but I was forced to learn it and do it this way.
Probably it was more of a wasted time, because I just felt at that point I just needed more experience overall, building apps to then understand the architectures because it made zero sense to me at that time
Thanks man I needed to hear this.
It’s a good day when bigbox uploads
idk if its intentional but i like how ur outro is liquidy, it reminds me of fireship
Great video, and awesome visuals, for someone who is a self aspired web developer I think it’s a good idea to start off good, and I haven’t even done much with code yet! this video is relatable
Hahaha I loved the quick boondocks reference.
Hey top of my UA-cam home page lol. Love your vids
Thank you so much❤
Thank you for the vid.
const isOld = (age: number): string | Error => {
if (age) return age > 60 ? "old" : "young";
throw new Error("Invalid input value");
};
const res1 = isOld(61);
const res2 = isOld(60);
const res3 = isOld(59);
// written in TypeScript
Thank you, this is wisdom that most people and teachers don't ever say. You want to keep practicing and making more stuff, and that's the advice that everyone says. But like you mention, if you're writing things inefficiently, incorrectly, etc, but keep doing THAT, then you're not improving. Just like the person who keeps trying to create art but doesn't learn how to draw people with proper anatomy. Compared to art though, I feel like it's harder to learn the "right" ways to do things because everything is so situational. That's part of the fun, to be sure, but it also makes it tricky. But I guess the solution would be "Read lots of (well-written) code"?
Having learned a second language to fluency and an instrument to a high level, I feel better hearing programming is more like that process than studying law lol.
indeed, i draw more parallels to when i was learning the guitar or writing essays, than when i was studying econ
Hey Yo, Thanks Man. You helped me A lot
PRACTICE MAKES PERMANENT.
Thanks!
2:00 First off, the function only returns one of two values, so it can just be bool. This can make the function be inlined better and just return the result of the expression (age > 60).
Secondly, if you need to check if age is nonzero, and you must return a string, the current code is redundant. If you do nothing outside the if(age) control path, the if statement should not exist. Also what's with the random semicolons?
this advise I good for anything one wants to learn, it's literally the direct->drill cycle (do the thing you want to learn figure out what you're bad at then drill it, repeat) improving upon your old work is a good example of copy type drilling.
more videos like this please
Yes Thank You so much!! You saved me ☺️
This is actually the wrong mindset if you want to become a professional programmer. The question to ask is not "how can I improve this". The right question to ask is "how much are they going to pay me to improve this".
if it works they probably pay nothing, so don't bother
Programmer this code uses 40 MB more memory than it needs to. It's trash.
User: cool app...
Both insightful & helpful, thanks bigboxSWE.
I love your videos. Short and concise and funny. Nothing like the others with 10 and 15 mins of play time and just spewing BS (sorry to say).
Read a little, implement what you've learned, read more.
Learn the basic, understand the basics by creating something with it, move to advance.
Thank you!!!
Hey, I really appreciate these videos as a complete beginner trying to be a software engineer in the future your videos help me feel less anxious about programming because it can get overwhelming. I would really appreciate if you could make a more specific “beginners guide” or “guide for dummies” roadmap of what we should learn/do to gain the knowledge and skills to be a software engineer
So genuine 💯
thanks for the advice
I am a natural perfectionist, and I don't think that's a bad thing after years of being me and getting things wrong lol it means that more often than not, I know what kind of outcome would be satisfying, but, now with experience, I've embraced iteration. In fact, I'm so happy I found the concept of iteration. I would have been really unhappy in life without it. 😅
sending virtual hugs 🤗
my friend made a simple todo app in the first year of collage then he just added more features and gimmicks to todo app that it he learned so much in three years that me who made about many projects and countless half finished projects have never will learn he just reflected on his code and made it fast by using the ds he used inked list for goals lists and day list and so many ideas like he even added the chat gpt into it like if we are too lazy to add previous tasks it just add the tasks to the lists and it even f**king have Bluetooth connection for turning off the lights when it is studying time and turning off fan to awake him up at the morning coded in react native it's like i wasted so much by just making so many projects I could have taken just two or three projects and added good features to it
hey, could you share the project please?
Your vids are just good keep up
Good length + valuable info = 1 supasacaripe from me
❤
Its what I did, 3 years ago until now (:
I love your videos
I wish you made this video when I got admitted in computer science
3min of pure wisdom
Oh nice that's exactly what I've doing been doing for the past week making a math app.
Taught me real nice lessons on like what i can and can't do, what's making it immediately crash, how to send variables to different classes, and why can't i sleep? Whoops that was a different kind of problem
Stumbling your way through is feeling pretty painful though since i only know the most basic of the basic shit
good shit son!
Exactly, a good way of thinking is always challenging yourself, want to make a game? Do it! Through trial and error you'll learn. This works with any concept in your mind. Make chess, make an AI, make whatever you desire, but remember, you'll very likely finish your goal. Even if it might be a little bit messy & complicated. You now know what to do better when coding your next project.
I wish I could give this video another like
"Your Approach to Programming is Wrong"
Ok. Teach me how to think.
True... Also we go through imposter syndrome, burn out etc..
that's another thing i was thinking about just yesterday. i want to learn a newer programming language and try different approaches, so i chose rust and i went quite far in the book. i could continue learning rust and building stuff with it, but it would probably take a lot of time to get used to, which is not a problem for me. i am ready for it.
OR i could learn a simpler language like Go, and try more stuff using it. I think it's fair to assume that my output would be more in volume with Go. On the other hand, it's better to start early with Rust, and I could learn Go anyway at some point because it's supposed to be easier. Perhaps i am thinking too much about it lol
Either way, I can't wait to finally be done with my finals and trying some dumb projects in the summer. Thanks for the encouraging video
I really loved your videos good sir and I keep watching them for motivation !
Tho I would love to know what BGM you used in this video ?
I did that when I was making a project.
I created a navbar and included it using "require" from PHP. I noticed I was requiring it every time I created a new page, that and I was also requiring bootstrap links. So I changed everything, created just one page that required these two things and included the rest based on the user's behavior
interesting...
if i write a code in one go and it works i would start questioning reality
The continuation of this is don’t refactor everyone else’s code just because it does not match your style. Refactor as you go. If refactoring is on your todo list you’re doing it wrong.
after spending a whole day thinking about the perfect way to structure an object, I could see that being a problem xD
every iteration makes you better and better. do it 1999 times if needed.
To anyone struggling with this I recommend Dr K's video called "Why Your Perfectionism Keeps You From Doing Anything"
you are GOATED
Thanks
But how do you build fullstack apps without reading and understanding async js for example
Bigbox is a legend
the worse thing about learning programming is watching a lot of tutorials and ending up in tutorial hell. Taking small projects, such as building a website for friends, churches, or small business is in my opinion one of the best ways to learn.
i love you big box
hi bigboxSWE, may i know how long it took you before u felt a lil more confident in ur coding (from when u had absolutely zero exp)
Huh, so pretty much what I have been doing. I think the biggest learning experience that got me down this route was going to a hackathon thinking I was top dog and figuring out that I was complete ass and tits instead
Going through a programming burnout right now, and haven't programmed anything worthwhile....... makes sense?
im programming like dijkstra intended it, i mathematically proof all my functions 🗿
The problem is when I don't know exactly what to code 😢
2:00 is_old_aged can return undefined and not just string?
When you read books, did you learn nothing from any exercise? Haven't practiced in any project?