What mistake did you make as a beginner software developer?
Often we beginning software developers make the same mistakes as their peers before them.
I made my fair share of mistakes that I hope you can avoid. Here are some examples of mistakes we all made starting out.
I extremely overestimated my knowledge
The classic Dunning-Kruger effect. After my first project outside of college i thought im really good at JAVA. Working in the field now has taught me that i havent reached a level expertise that would make me confident to say I understand 50% of what JAVA is.
Not asking for help
I am admitting im having a hard time asking others for help on solving issues. I like the challenge of solving issues myself but there are people with more experience and skills in the same room that could help me. To improve oneself, needs to ask a more senior developer. Its a fact.
Its sometimes hard to go against ones pride but usually it pays off and theres is always something important you can learn on the way.
Reinventing the wheel.
Using the solutions that already exists is much more efficient than to write the 100th boilperplate for the same thing that already exists on github a million times.
Poor design
Design choices are difficult and important. The wrong pattern can block a future solution. Its probably better to design to for the need there is currently than to have an overcomplicated design that will never be used.
New things are shiny.
I have switched between different coding contexts and IDEs and programming languages and frameworks that i can’t really remeber all of them anymore. I often never really programmed extensivly in one single language, therefore I never gained a deeper understanding of it. It would have been better to stick to one language and gain a holistic, deep-seated view.
My language is better than your language
A lot of people assume that one language is better than an other language. Most oftenly its coincidently the one they are using.
There is also a lot of bashing on Javascript, while its actually a very versatile language that you can do alot of great things with.
There is one exception to this. PHP is a garbage language. I regret ever having touched this stinking pile of rubble. Never get near it.
What i hope you take from these lessons, at the very minumum is to never use PHP. No seriously this is not a joke. Avoid it like the plague. And if you must, then try to not kill yourself. Good luck out there. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
