8 Beginner Programmer Mistakes to Avoid [Infographic]

When you are just starting out and making a career as a beginner programmer, you lack experience. This often results in beginner programming mistakes that are often learned through experience or mentor guideline.

In this article, we are presenting you with a handy list of beginner programmer mistakes than you can easily avoid and fast track your career. Earlier, we also covered handy tips for beginner android developers that you may want to learn.

Mistakes of Beginner Programmer

The infographic below is prepared by hackr.io and lists 8 mistakes that every programmer make. By learning these in advance, you can train yourself to avoid them.

Here is a verbal summary of the mistakes mentioned in the infographic above:

1. Absence of Planning

Starting out without a plan will often result in spaghetti code which is difficult to debug or maintain. Always plan out how you will implement the given feature or product before starting out.

2. Underestimating Code Quality

A beginner programmer often underestimates the importance of code quality. Writing readable code includes proper naming of variables and methods, and writing helpful comments to allow yourself and others to come back and comprehend it.

3. Picking the first answer as solution

Given a problem to solve, a beginner programmer often looks for a solution through forums, peers etc. and then adopts the first solution that he finds, even if the solution is complicated. One needs to understand that there is often more than one way a problem can be solved. What differentiates an experienced programmer from a beginner programmer is the simplicity with which an experienced programmer will solve the same problem.

4. Not Quitting

Beginner programmers are unable to refactor their own code to discard the non-working part. This often leads to stale code in the product code base that doesn’t contribute to the final feature and is often harder to maintain in the long run.

5. Not using Google

Often, beginner programmers fail to simply search for a problem that they are facing. This may be error in their programming setup or outdated libraries which are often faced by other programmers and are easily solved by searching for it on search engines such as Google.

6. Not using proper Data Structre

Learning the pros and cons of different data structures is essential before you begin you career as a programmer. Often, the data can be stored in a fashion that makes it easier to access it later. Simple examples would be sorted arrays and dictionaries.

7. Unable to add to existing code

Beginner programmers often do miserably when adding to the existing code base. If you find the code messy, then refactor it before starting out instead of making it messier.

8. Too much obsession about best practices

In order to show that they are superior, a beginner programmer will try to obsess too much over the best practices, thereby slowing himself down. Adopt the practices used by the team and continue to do that. If there is a lack of best practices in the team, then take it up with your mentor instead of enforcing it on yourself without telling anyone.

I hope that, I was able to add a little bit over the beginner mistakes mentioned in the infographic above. If you are starting out as a beginner programmer, don’t be afraid to learn. Most importantly, learn from your mistakes and from experiences of senior programmers. Good Luck!