Published on November 30th, 2018 | by Sunit Nandi

Mistakes You Might Be Making As A Newbie Web Developer

Mistakes are inevitable when you’re a newbie web developer. However, the real problem is if you don’t know that you’re actually making them. Developing a website for blogging platforms could be very challenging. So, to avoid these mistakes here’s a list to check out.

Not Having Confidence

The first and sometimes only mistake a programmer may have is thinking that you’re not going to make a good program because you’re not smart enough. It’s normal to believe that code is an alien language because it is! A regular person won’t be able to understand it unless given a chance to understand what each part of code does. Then little by little, you’ll learn the logic behind every code, and it’s not as scary as you thought it was. You don’t realize it, but that’s what you need to become a good programmer: the determination and logical thinking. For starters, it’s best to use “Scratch” – a drag-and-drop visual programming tool where you can play with your programming skills. There, you can practice the concepts like variables and arrays, the “if” conditionals and loops. Since there’s no typing involved, you won’t be put off by mistyping codes.

Not Having Back Up

Losing your work and not having a back up saved somewhere is a disaster for a programmer. The hours upon hours of work can be lost in an instant. There’s numerous free online backup tools that you can use for automatic back up. You can’t make an excuse that you lost your work because of a computer malfunction or even theft. “There’s no backup.” shouldn’t be in your vocabulary.

Usage of Uppercase And Lowercase

Be mindful when writing your function names and variable. Whether a language is case-sensitive or not you should use proper cases. Newbie programmers often encounter codes that don’t run. They don’t realize that it’s because of inconsistent uppercase or lowercase in variables. For example: “var Grade = 90”, than – “if (grade > 80)”.

Also, bring the conventions of different languages together in one place. Switching between languages doesn’t respect the new language’s style conventions. There are languages that have a convention of separating words with underscores, and some use camel case. Camel case is using lowercase on the first word then followed by words starting with a capital letter like bestScore or myGrade. So if you mix them together, it may not work.

Confusing Variable And Function Names

You may have encountered variable names like “AbstractSingletonProxyFactoryBean” and you may have found it silly, but, writing long descriptive variable names are helpful than using abbreviations. This makes your code less confusing and lessens the chance of having the same name on different variables and breaking your code.

The one thing you should be careful with when naming variables are the spelling. If you misspell your variable name and need to write it again, you’ll have a hard time looking for the reason for having a broken code. Make your variable names easy for you to remember and don’t use keywords that you’ll eventually forget.

Sloppy Formatting

Messy formatting is always associated with newbie programmers. There’s languages that don’t have strict rules on how to format a code but, indentions or inconsistency in using new lines are signs that the programmer who wrote the code is a newbie. Programmers using JavaScript tend to be somewhat sloppy with formatting because JavaScript interpreter runs code written in any layout. Indentions show where the code’s conditionals, functions, and loops start and end. This is how you can be sure that your codes are in the right place. Also, codes that are needed anymore should be deleted and not kept for future use or in case there’s a need for them. If the need arises, then you can write them again but if not, get the commented-out code out to have a cleaner format.

Thinking You Know It All

When new programmers finally write codes that work, the initial reaction is to show your friends how you did it, and you start having that feeling that you can do anything. While that’s awesome and all, make sure that you still do your part in studying, researching and continue educating yourself because believe me when I say, you don’t know it all yet. There’s a lot more to learn, and you have a long way to go.

Conclusion

All newbie web-developers should be able to enjoy programming like a hobby – yes it could be very tricky but is also very rewarding at the end. Just avoid these mistakes so that you won’t go wrong with your web-development career. There’s a lot more mistakes you’ll encounter on your own as you go along and until then, happy programming!

Tags: making, might be, mistakes, newbie, web developer

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.