4 Ways to Get Through the Dark Days of Learning to Program
All of us have them. In any long-term pursuit—getting a PhD, training for a marathon, or learning to program—there are dark days. You know…
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Why You’ll Make More Programming Progress in 2021 with Monthly Planning
I did something different in 2020, and it's had a profound effect on my programming progress. Instead of detailed quarterly plans, I’ve…
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Why You Need a Programming Checklist
It’s a familiar story. The code reads like a cryptic puzzle. The program has lines of “dead” code or contains useless comments. Or changes…
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How to Crush It While Working from Home
Working from home has become the new normal. Without a commute or office distractions, you should be crushing it every day. Are you? If you…
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Why Asking "What’s the Fastest Way to Learn to Program?” Is the Wrong Question
Programmers have a need for speed. This seems particularly true of those who are just starting out in the field. They want to learn to…
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What's on Your Programming Reading List?
“I think you need to read more,” my professor told me bluntly. I’d just shared my idea for an upcoming paper, and he clearly wasn’t thrilled…
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3 Programming Habits to Build Now
You’re learning to program, and looking for some answers. What skills do you need to develop? What concepts matter most? Which resources are…
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Why You’ll Get Better Faster with Feedback
We often think that the best doctors have the most experience. But one study suggests otherwise: the longer doctors have been in practice…
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How to Accelerate Your Programming Knowledge with Multiple Streams of Learning
My recommendation is to apply an approach that I like to call “multiple streams of learning,” or MSL. It means to actively study a field or…
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Learning to Program Is a Lifelong Pursuit
It’s odd to me. People talk about learning to program like it’s a one-time thing; that it’s something for novices. I don’t see it this way…
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Are You Becoming a Better Programmer?
I received an interesting question from a reader recently. He wanted to know how you can tell if you’re making progress as a programmer. It…
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How freeCodeCamp Is Helping Me Become a Better Programmer
Judging by the title, you may think this article is about the programming content on freeCodeCamp. You’d be partly right. But it’s also…
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Cory House’s Analogy Between Writing Code and Writing Prose
I’m working through Cory House’s Pluralsight course, Clean Coding Principles in C# , and something interesting has caught my attention…
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How to Get Better at Solving Programming Problems
Most of us have been given the same advice: to become a better problem solver, you need to solve more problems. But this advice is too…
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Learn to Program Better with The Weekly Spot Drill
Most of us have fallen into this trap. We’re so focused on learning a topic or honing a skill that we don’t touch previously learned…
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Improve your Code by Writing Better Variable Names
“You should improve your variable names,” a programmer told me bluntly after reviewing a program of mine. His comment stopped me in my…
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Why Programmers Need a Training Journal
The field of programming is as wide as it is deep. No matter if you’ve been programming for a month, year, decade, or more, all of us have…
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How to Declare a JS Arrow Function—My Recent freeCodeCamp Article
If you find JavaScript’s arrow function syntax a bit confusing, you’re not alone. It can be tricky to nail down at first. And that’s why I…
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2 Traits of Great Programmers
What distinguishes great programmers from good ones? It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with since I began learning to program . I’ve…
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Why Reading Code Matters (and how to get better at it)
It strikes me as odd. We’ve heard the same messages: Write clean code. Write readable code. Write concise code. I agree with these…
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The Best Resources to Learn Python in 2020
Finding a good programming resource is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It's hard to find and can take a lot of time. I’ve used…
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4 Ways to Learn Programming Topics
All programmers have something in common. There’s a lot of programming knowledge to learn and we need a way to learn it effectively. In many…
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How Ben Franklin Can Help You Become a Better Programmer
Benjamin Franklin was a lot of things, including a scientist, an inventor, writer, and politician. He was also a great learner. In his…
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Program Better in Ten-Mode
Many programmers don't get the most from their programming hours. In large part, this is because most workplaces don't emphasize peak…
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Why You Should Cross-Train Your Programming Brain
It seemed counterintuitive. Standing in Barnes & Noble one winter evening, I paged through a running book titled Run Less, Run Faster…
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How to Retain the Programming Knowledge You’ve Gained
There’s a lot to learn as a programmer. And there’s just as much material to remember and recall. You don’t want to relearn SQL because you…
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A Better Way to Learn Test-Driven Development
The meetup had a requirement. About fifteen of us sat around plastic tables and chairs listening to the meetup organizer explain the problem…
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Learning a New Programming Topic? Start with the Big Picture
It kept happening. I’d set out to learn a new programming topic and get caught up in the details. Learning something new took forever. I’d…
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The Art of Problem-Solving
On a rainy Monday night in downtown Boston, I sat around a small conference room table with three other programmers. I was at a Python…
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Jocko Willink and The Disciplined Life
Jocko Willink, a former Navy SEAL, underscores the importance of discipline in his latest book, “Discipline Equals Freedom.” It’s filled…
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Use a Standing Desk to Boost Your Energy at Work
People try kinds of tactics to stay awake during the day. Drinking caffeine in one of its many forms — coffee, energy drinks, or soda — is…
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5 Things Artists Can Teach Us about Productivity
Society portrays artists as eccentric people, lounging around their studio or office waiting for inspiration to strike. But after reading…
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Stop the Meetings!
The workplace is meeting-happy these days. We meet to discuss projects. We meet to create processes. We meet to share daily goals. And we…
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Be a Good Manager
I was intrigued by Jason Fried’s recent post on being a bad manager , so I decided to take the opposite tack. This post is about being a…
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Working in Blocks of Time
I used to be a to-do list fanatic. Each evening I wrote the things I wanted to accomplish the following day on a pocket-sized notebook pad…
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