Programming Tips for Beginners

Key Takeaways

hey guys and welcome back to another video so in today's video what I'm gonna be talking about is my top programming tips for beginners now I get the same questions asked all the time Tim I'm a beginner programmer I need some help what should I do how can I move from those beginner levels to the intermediate levels what kind of projects should I work on what should I be focusing on and hopefully I can answer some of those questions here for you guys today so before I get too far into the video let me just tell you guys a little bit about myself so you know where I'm getting some of these tips and some of this information from so my name is Tim I'm 18 years old and I just finished my first year of computer science now I've been teaching and just doing programming videos on this YouTube channel tech with Tim for probably about the past two years and I've interacted with hundreds if not thousands of you guys throughout the comments or a discord Twitter and Instagram and I see a ton of beginners that want tips and need some help in terms of improving their programming ability other than that I actually teach programming in a classroom to kids aged between 11 and 15 years old so I just teach them the basics of Python and throughout a week we create a very basic game but those are where I see a lot of beginner programmers as well and where I'm going to be grabbing a lot of my tips from now other than that I also do some private tutoring on the side and some consultations and stuff like that so I have a lot of experience not only just with like friends and knowing people that program but actually teaching it as well and this is where I'm gonna come in to some of the tips here and hopefully allow you guys to you know improve your programming from that beginner level to the intermediate level and the steps you need to take to get there so programming tip number one do not be afraid to make mistakes and to experiment with things you don't know now this is the most important by far on my list of programming tips and it's something that I see so commonly with beginner programmers are that is that they're really afraid or even upset or embarrassed when they make mistakes with their code something you got to learn and that you will realize quickly in programming is no one really knows what they're doing when we get down to things any program you write is gonna have bugs there's gonna be mistakes and there's gonna be errors ask any programmer that you look up to even myself maybe and say how many times you make a mistake when you're coding and if you expect that answer to be zero you're gonna be wildly surprised when they tell that almost half the time probably more than their coding their fixing their mistakes and trying to figure out where they went wrong now the wonderful thing about making mistakes is if you actually really care about learning programming and figuring out what is wrong if you go through and you analyze that mistake and take your time and figure out what you did wrong and fix it not only the kind of joy and feeling you get for fixing that mistake and being like all right finally after two hours I found that bug but you're never gonna forget that again or if you do you're gonna slightly remember the steps you took to fix that mistake and if it happens again in another program you're gonna be like hey I remember this this one I was stuck on for a long time this was the issue or this is kind of what I did to get to that issue so maybe this will help me here and that's personally one of the ways that I learned new modules in Python or just code in general what I do is literally go in my Python console and just start typing stuff and seeing what happens I would much rather see read text that confirms you know you don't know what you're doing go back and fix it then type a few lines and not really know what I'm doing and have the output come out okay so please guys don't be afraid to see those error messages if you do see one rather than just copying and pasting your code into Stack Overflow why don't you go look at that error message analyze it and figure out what's going wrong with your program because I guarantee you if you do that you're gonna remember that mistake and in the future you're gonna be like oh I came out I saw this one before and you'll know how to fix that so that's programming tip number one please please please if you get one thing from that video don't be afraid to make mistakes that's the only way you're truly gonna learn and be able to validate whether you know what you're doing or not okay programming tip number two and this one comes really nicely from the last tip we talked about please read your error messages that is programming tip number two now for some reason beginners think that when they click the f5 button to run their code or whatever it is and they see red text they're done they say okay well I guess I got to go back right back to the code and start trying things until eventually I see the output that I want which is just working some print statements whatever it is no no no when you click f5 and you run the code and that error message pops up you better read every line of that error message and make sure you understand what mistake you made and why you made it now not only our error mess is super useful and actually designed to help programmers and to help you figure out what's wrong with your code but learning to read error messages is a skill that you have to master if you ever want to go beyond a beginner programming level now I say this in a really frustrated way just because teaching I see so often especially the younger kids that I teach in the classroom that just come to me with their laptop they go Tim it doesn't work and I say before I even look at their laptop I say okay so what have we tried like what's the goal of the program and I break it down with them and usually after about a minute or two of me talking and saying okay so let's get into this error message and actually analyze it together they figure out on their own without me telling them whatsoever what the air is in their code and I say look I'm happy to help you guys out but please just read the error messages before you come up because if you do that you're probably gonna be able to figure out what's wrong with your code and you're gonna save both of us a lot of time now that's what I'm saying as a tip here please read your error messages well some of them are complicated and I understand that as a beginner you'll see some words in there that you don't really know what they mean or you're kind of confused by them but even at the minimal just seeing what line numbers something went wrong at and taking a quick peek maybe at your code at that line and seeing if you can find the bug because many times especially in simple programs the errors are very very simple maybe a typo maybe forgot a bracket and you can really easily go back and fix them and save yourself a lot of time rather than having to do it a stack overflow and copy it in and get someone else to help you with that question so please do yourself a favor read your error messages even if you don't understand them read every single one because you will start to learn from those error messages and when you see similar ones well you're gonna know how to fix them because you already came up with that solution by learning from making mistakes and all that all right programming tip number three work on projects now I know a lot of people get very upset when I tell them to work on projects because the first thing they say to me is well I don't know what to work on I don't have enough skills there's no projects I can do guys it doesn't matter what project you work on it doesn't matter if your project makes any sense whatsoever it doesn't matter if your project is printing two lines of code when I say work on projects I mean do something by yourself where you're not referring to a video guide or a website or a tutorial of some sorts don't get me wrong I we make a living by making Python and programming tutorial videos so if you guys don't stop watching my tutorials then that's really gonna suck that's not what I'm saying I'm saying go learn the basics get the fundamentals down understand what's happening and then as soon as you're comfortable stop maybe for a day or for an hour or 20 minutes and work on something by yourself and try to program something and see if you really understand it it's really easy even for someone like me to go on a really advanced programming tutorial just copy down the code with them and be like this guy's explaining it well it makes sense and then as soon as I'm actually on my own and I have to apply those concepts by myself I'm like hmm I don't really understand it that well and then I have to go back and watch the video again or I have to try to figure out you know where my understanding is lacking so please don't do the one month a stretch of just going through tutorial videos and copying down all the projects and being like this is what I made this is cool that's great and falling along with project videos that's awesome it's literally how I make a living but I would love for you guys you know to do your own projects where you can validate really what you know and what you don't know and I'll tell you right now if you start working on your own projects something that a lot of youtubers and personally me myself do is I cut out where I make like massive mistakes in a video so if I'm recording a video and I make some like pretty critical errors that take up a lot of time in the video I'll just cut them and go to the next part where I fix the mistake now that is a really valuable part of programming that obviously is not entertaining to watch but it's something that you should definitely be experiencing and if you can work on your own projects you're gonna realize really quickly how many mistakes you're running into and learning from those mistakes again by not being afraid to make mistakes is gonna help you improve your programming ability tremendously especially being able to do your own research and look things up and just you know doing programming on your own is something you definitely need to do as a beginner and you're not gonna get anywhere from just simply watching programming videos online alright guys so my final tip and this one should really go without saying have fun with what you're doing I see so many people that get caught up in the stress and the debugging and kind of the negative aspects of coding maybe and they forget about why they're doing it in the first place the whole reason that I code is because I love to do it I'm not doing it so I can go get a nice my paying job or so I can show off to my friends or have the killer resume all those things are great but at the end of the day you shouldn't be programming and putting as much time as you do into it if you don't absolutely love what you're doing so try to pick areas of programming that you enjoy try to go into routes that you're passionate about and doing that is not only gonna make you even better because you're gonna be so passionate about learning and just figuring out new things and solving problems but it's just a way better use of your time why sit in front of a computer eight hours a day if you do something that you hate so if you're a beginner programmer and you're starting to realize that you really don't enjoy it you know don't feel like you have to keep going with that route I would encourage you to try different things and find areas where maybe you might enjoy them a bit more before you give it up but if you're really at the point where you don't like what you're doing then just stop there's nothing telling you to keep going and I know that the starting salaries for computer scientists or software engineers are very high compared to other fields but it's not worth it if you're not gonna be enjoying what you're doing and the opposite as well if you enjoy what you're doing double down keep going don't think that just because you're a beginner you can't create some awesome stuff and make some cool projects and try different things and build AI and do all this awesome stuff if you enjoy it keep doing it and keep working towards it and you're gonna notice really quickly that that passion shows off and you can tell in any video see Watchers people you see whether they're passionate about what they do and what they're not and typically the people that like what they do are the best at it at least in my opinion so anyways that has kind of been this we're gonna go into a quick recap here but I'd love to know you guys thoughts in the comments down below so please you know communicate with me down there so with that being said let's do a quick recap here at the end of the video just to tell you guys the tips one more time so tip number one do not be afraid to make mistakes and to experiment with things super important if you only get one tip from the video that's the one you should definitely be listening to tip number two read your error messages again super important this goes right with the first point if you actually want to progress in programming you have to make sure you understand where you're going wrong and how you can fix that and maybe do a little bit more work on that tip number three work on projects and just do your own coding without falling online tutorials online tutorials are great and they help learn a ton but once you've been through enough of them it's time to sit down by yourself for even just half an hour and try to create something on your own and very quickly you'll realize how much you know and how much you don't and the final tip and you know what this one they say at the end of every sports game right have fun the end of the day why are we programming if your answer is just to get a job you should really consider switching your profession or doing something else because programming is such a rewarding field when you enjoy what you're doing and personally for me a lot of people look at me like I'm insane when I go program for like six seven hours at a time I love doing that and there's nothing honestly that I'd rather be doing in a lot of cases so please pick something that you're having fun with if you don't like web development try game development if you don't like game development try something else try doing AI and just taste a bunch of different stuff until you figure out what you enjoy and then stick with that because at the end of the day the whole point of this at least for me is to have fun and to challenge myself mentally because I really enjoy programming and coding and that's what you guys should be doing as well especially if you're a beginner just getting into the field so anyways I apologize if I rambled a little bit in this video I just really do and impassionate about this because I see so many people that are young programmers with such amazing potential that don't follow kind of some of the tips that I outlined here and end up either not pursuing programming we're not going as far as I know they can so anyways I hope you guys enjoyed the video if you did make sure to LIKE the video and share it and subscribe to the channel with that being said I will see you guys