5 Excellent Ways to Improve Your Coding Confidence

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Your early period as a professional programmer is usually very challenging. This is even made more difficult if you are a self-taught programmer with no academic credentials. A lot of junior developers are scared and even doubtful about their preparedness. Here, we make a compendium of things you can do in order to gain more confidence as a programmer. The tips in this article, however, do not apply only to rookie programmers but also to the experienced ones as well.

Steady and Consistent Practice

The practice is essential for you to build confidence in your own abilities as a programmer. It is not enough just for you to follow online videos and tutorials; you need to give coding a hands-on approach and build a project of your own. This may include creating a JavaScript plugin, opening your own personal blog in PHP, and so on. These activities will enable you to appreciate how the concept of these things work, which will give you knowledge of pre-packed applications and plugins in your work. Furthermore, when you practice on your own, you can fail a lot of times and you will definitely learn from these failures and you will know where and how to make amends. This will definitely improve your skills as a coder, which will, in turn, boost your confidence.

Create a Project and Release It

Having mastered your art as a result of intense practice, it is necessary to apply the knowledge you have acquired and that should be done in no other way than to embark on a task and showcase it to the world. Your project could be a website, a mobile app or a Ruby Gem, it does not matter. What matters is that people find your work good enough to use. When you find out that a lot of people make use of your work, it will boost your morale and confidence.

Contribute on Github

If you want to boost your confidence, you can also be a part of Github and contribute to Open Source Projects there. You can gain a lot from studying other people’s code as well as comments and reactions to your own work. More so, it is not even necessary to create a new code of your own; it is possible for you to adapt or tinker with a wiki or update information. This will indicate that you are conversant with the code and you can use it in ways that suit your own purpose.

Give a Talk at a Meet-up

It might be scary to talk at meet-ups, with a lot of fellow developers in attendance. You might feel that you do not have enough understanding of the concept to impress your colleagues. The truth, however, is that a lot of the coders present are usually less experienced than you are and they are there to learn more about coding themselves. Hence, they will find what you have to say useful and invaluable. Also, the gut to stand in front of a large number of people will give you more boldness.

Talk to Everyone

Communication is important. Speak with colleagues and you will realize that almost all your peers have the same fears as you and that you are not alone in your fears. Furthermore, you get to share ideas which will make you a better programmer.