10 Tips to Improve Programming Skills (for beginners) – How to be a better Programmer ?

Do you find programming difficult & intimidating ? Are you just getting started with programming & wondering what are the best ways to study this subject ? Let me give you some insights & my 10 simple tips to improve programming skills in a much easy, better & faster way.

Before we start off with the tips, here’s a quick fact –

Anyone & everyone can learn programming & be great at it. Period.

– Tanmay Sakpal

Okay so just clear this thought from your mind that learning programming is not everyone’s cup of tea! So now thats out of the way, lets start with the 10 simple yet effective tips which you can implement to learn programming in a better & easy way.

1 . Practice by Typing –
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Yup, no running away from this basic thing! If you are a beginner & getting started with programming, then the best way to remember in detail is to type the program with your own hands! Trust me, just reading the programs, syntax, algorithm & logic and saying you understand it is not going to help you. When you type programs yourself, it gets registered in your mind in a much permanent way.

2 . Experiment/Play with Code –
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Whenever you understand a code snippet, try to experiment & play around with it by making changes to it. This will give you a more broader understanding of the working of the code & you might discover something more interesting. Remember – In most scenarios, there are multiple ways to achieve the same solutions. for e.g. there are 3 different ways to find whether a number is a prime number or not (did you know this ?)

3 . Improve Google Skills –
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Understanding that Google probably has 90% of all your answers is a very empowering fact. Why ? Because then you don’t have to keep asking your friends, seniors, mentors, teachers for small small queries which you get when you struggle with programming. Majority of your beginners level doubts will be sorted with basic google search.

Developing this habit of google search of errors and problems that you face while programming will not only make you self dependent & confident but also it will speed up your learning process & will keep the learning momentum and enthusiasm up. Pro-Tip : There are expert ways to search on google too. How ? Just google it 😛

4 . Ask for Help –
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When you are a beginner, sometimes you might not find the issue on google or the issue might be very specific. In such situations, never hesitate to ask your seniors, friends, mentors or teachers.
Remember – A person who asks questions remains a fool for 5 mins, but a person who never asks questions & always stays in doubt remains a fool for life.
So be curious, keep asking questions all the time.

5. Ask the question WHY ? –
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Whenever you learn a particular concept in programming always have the habit of understanding WHY you are learning that concept rather than just understanding what is the concept. This will make you understand it in a much better way and will be helpful in many real world situations.
Make this a habit of asking WHY, WHERE, HOW and more questions along with WHAT whenever you are learning any topic in programming.

6. Study Data Structures & Algorithms –

learn data structures for programming

When it comes to programming language, understanding Data structures & algorithms is equally important if not more important as it improves the logic building skills.
Ultimately when you want to become a developer, you will be writing code corresponding to big algorithms & hence its very important to study data structures.
You can refer my Data Structures & Algorithms tutorials for beginners on youtube for the full course.

7. Join Tech Communities & Forums –

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If you are a beginner, joining different online tech communities will definitely provide you a lot of knowledge about latest technology trends, programming tutorials & topics & speed up your learning process. Many experts on these tech community platforms share a lot of healthy information related to technology. Here are some sites to refer –

As you get better in programming, even you can contribute your knowledge & skills in these communities.

8. Work on a Project –
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To learn programming faster & in a more detailed way, I always recommend beginners to work on a small project. This is the best way to have a glimpse of how real world applications work. Start with a small project like a basic inventory management system, calculator or attendance manager etc & build more tough projects on the go. This will give you real insights of where exactly different programming concepts are utilized.

9. Work in Teams –
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Start to develop a habit of working in teams right from the start. Eventually when you get into a corporate environment, you will be working in teams & if you already are used to it, the experience will be seamless. Other benefits are that when you are working in teams, there is a lot of knowledge transfer between you and your team mates & thus you learn a lot more than what you would learn as an individual. Also the success rate of your project increases drastically & risk of failure of project reduces dramatically.

10. Take part in Hackathons & Competitive Programming events –
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Taking part in hackathons & programming competitions will give you a good idea about where exactly do you stand among the competition. It will also give you a lot of insights about ideas from other developers & hence will add a lot to your knowledge. Make your profile accounts on competitive programming website like –

  • HackerRank – https://www.hackerrank.com/
  • CodeChef – https://www.codechef.com/
  • HackerEarth – https://www.hackerearth.com/

Initially you might find the problems on these websites difficult(I sucked at it 😀 ), but yeah slowly you will get a hang of it and this will dramatically improve your programming as well as logical & analytical skills.

So yeah that’s pretty much it, I know these programming tips seem basic but if you try to keep them in mind and consciously try to implement them, your programming learning experience will be impactful as well as fun & easy too. 

If you liked this article definitely checkout my Tech Educational Youtube channel Simple Snippets. I have free Programming tutorials & many other Computer Science Subject tutorials on this channel. you can also follow me on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/simplesnippets/

Thank you.
Peace!

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