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Bootcamp in Denver taught me I was coding way too fast
Last month I went to a local coding meetup in Denver and this senior dev watched me type for like 10 minutes. He said I was writing code like I was trying to win a race. He pointed out I had 3 bugs in 20 lines because I was rushing to finish functions. I slowed down, typed one line at a time, and actually tested stuff as I went. My todo app went from crashing every 5 minutes to working on the first try after that. Has anyone else felt like they had to unlearn bad habits from tutorials that push speed over quality?
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the_thomas23d ago
(and honestly, same deal with @blakem37 's joke about git force push, that got a genuine laugh out of me) but yeah the tutorial machine is broken. They crank out "build an app in 5 minutes" videos and everyone copies them without thinking. I had to unlearn that too, just took a step back and started reading my own code out loud. Slowing down felt weird at first but now I actually remember what each line does.
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blakem3723d ago
Wait, you mean copying code from a tutorial at 90 WPM doesn't make you a senior dev? Next thing you'll tell me is that typing `git push - force` isn't a deployment strategy.
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tara_jones9422d ago
Reading your code out loud is legit. I started doing that last year. Actually caught a ton of dumb mistakes that way. @the_thomas is right about slowing down. I used to race through tutorials just to feel productive. Now I type each line by hand, pause, and ask myself what it does. Feels slow at first but saves so much time debugging later. Copy paste just makes you a fast typer, not a better dev.
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