Become A Better Programmer!
5 Ways To Be More Engaged In Your Programming
In the rapidly evolving tech landscape, being a coder is pivotal to society and tends to be highly demanding. Being an engaged coder can be the difference between successful project outcomes and innovation to failed projects and scrapped launches. A programmer involves being flexible with languages, implying you need a learning mindset. A lack of engagement doesn’t just affect an individual’s performance; it can also hurt team dynamics, project timelines, and the overall success of any tech venture.
The tips that will be discussed will help you learn how to avoid these adverse outcomes and ensure you’ll take steps to become a passionate and engaged programmer through participating in online coding communities and projects, mentorship programs, and passion projects. This engagement will improve your coding skills and enrich your problem-solving and soft skills like collaborating with fellow developers. Overall, you’ll be a more accomplished and valuable coder in any team or project because you’re not just avoiding disengagement but setting yourself up for an exciting career in tech.
1. Open Source Projects
Participating in an open-source project is one great way to become more engaged with programming. Many companies and software products rely on and have been helped by open-source projects. Open-source projects expose you to different coding styles. How you approach a coding issue will differ from that of another programmer. Other programmers might use a different methodology or perspective. Participating in these communities will give you exposure and knowledge to these styles and approaches you wouldn’t have gained otherwise. Open-source projects have contributors from all over the world and of all skill levels. They are very welcoming and supportive environments to participate in if you follow the project’s standard guidelines for contributors. The collaborative nature of these projects will also motivate you to strive for the best contributions you can produce, encouraging you to think thoroughly while coding.
Finding an open-source project you can contribute to is very simple. The short and quick of it is that Github, a popular platform that allows developers to store and share their code, has an explore page. On this page, you can browse communities and topics you may be interested in contributing to. In these open-source projects, specific files detail what work they need from other developers. One essential thing to note before contributing is when you’re joining an open-source project; you must make sure to read the rules that are often in each repo’s readme. If you contribute without following these rules, you may be blacklisted from contributing to the project.
2. Participating in Online Communities
Contributing to various online open-source projects is one way to make you more engaged, but consider participating in the thriving online programming communities! Stack Overflow is a resource most programmers know and use regularly but rarely contribute to. It’s essentially an ask forum in the same vein as Quora, where programmers share their questions and receive answers from other programmers. Deciding to be on the answering end of the forum can help you encounter new coding challenges and scenarios and improve on and strengthen your knowledge of the coding you’re already familiar with. Even voting on posts is a fun way to contribute to the community and let others know you’ve read their questions or replies and found them helpful.
It’s always great to keep a continuous learning mindset regarding programming. More popular online coding communities to consider joining can be found on Reddit and GitHub. Three subreddits with millions of members and comprehensive coding resources are r/LearnProgramming, r/AskProgramming, and r/CodingHelp. On Github, under “GitHub community”, a portion of the site hosts discussion boards where users ask questions to other community members and discuss specific coding languages or platforms such as GitHub itself. Participating in any of these online communities will strengthen your knowledge and interest in programming!
3. Coding Competitions
Participating in competitive coding can also help you become more engaged. Leetcode is a popular problem-solving platform used by other coders that allows you to practice your coding skills for interviews. A cool feature is that it encourages users to compete with other users in contests. Using some of your coding knowledge competitively incentivizes you to think about these problems in smaller time frames, as it becomes more of a game than an explicit learning venture. Suppose online competitions aren’t your idea of fun. In that case, there are also almost always in-person hackathons, where large groups get together to solve real-world issues quickly and meet new people of all skill levels. Some hackathons even have large money prizes, depending on the size!
Engaging with online, local, or even national competitions keeps your coding skills sharp, lets you meet new coders, and allows you to win a prize for participating. If you love the competitive aspect and want to shoot to win a prize or grand prize, many tutorials on YouTube, such as this one by Maria Sitkovets, outline strategies for winning hackathons. One of the best ways is to understand what the organization or company hosting the hackathon is looking for in the participants’ entries. Does the company favor efficient code? Do they place a lot of weight on a well-designed solution? It’s essential to research the companies hosting the event and look at past submissions, if possible, from previous hackathons the organization may have hosted.
4. Mentorships
Whether as a mentor or a mentee, mentoring can enrich your coding engagement. Being a mentee through resources online or at school gives you a chance to ask questions and receive tailored answers for not just coding but coding opportunities that you weren’t aware of, such as any hackathons or career fairs that are happening. Having someone to contact for technical and career-related questions can give you the edge regarding personal and career-related goals. On the flip side, being a mentor gives you supplementary space to provide your expertise to other coders, break down concepts, and provide guidance in coding. Being a mentor would spur you to stay more in the loop regarding the goings-on of local coding events and the job market.
To take steps to become a mentor, it’s excellent first to search for where your knowledge can be utilized locally. If you’re a student, being a TA for a computer science-related class or a tutor is a great place to start. These positions are often paid, allow you to complete school work during lulls while working, and sometimes even offer tuition assistance. On top of the knowledge you’ll strengthen and gain while working in these mentorship positions, you’ll also make valuable connections with faculty members who run these programs. Making industry connections early in your student career will allow you to discover potential research opportunities or events through these contacts you might’ve missed otherwise.
Many industry professionals also love to help mentor students, and it feels nice to help others, especially budding young professionals! Finding mentor opportunities is relatively straightforward. More prominent colleges and universities often reach out and put together alumni panels to allow professionals to give their insights to many students at once. Some may prefer more personal or one-on-one mentorship opportunities. Many schools support and encourage industries to partner with colleges to help fund student research and capstone projects. These experiences allow you to create a genuine connection with students and people just starting in their chosen industry and lead to you helping foster talent and potentially bringing that talent to your workplace. These mentor opportunities don’t need to be limited to in-person or online school opportunities; online resources such as Code Mentor are great places to connect with mentors.
5. Passion Projects
Lastly, creating a programming passion project is one of the best ways to become a more engaged programmer. When you make a project from a personal desire, coding goes from just writing code to creating something you care deeply about and are excited to see through. It also can help with personal growth and give you an exciting piece to add to your portfolio. When you include passion projects in your portfolio, you give whoever is viewing it an insight into who you are and what you care about. This can help you stand out when you’re trying to get your foot in the door or move up in your profession, as it showcases where your passions lie and what type of work you’ll produce when you genuinely care about what you’re working on.
When you’re creating a personal project there’s much less of a sense of urgency, you can complete it on your terms, without the pressure of deadlines.
There are many avenues you can take to start developing a great passion project that is both personally enriching and will help your career. The first task is to find out what you’re passionate about — helping food banks. Want to reduce overconsumption? When you identify what excites you about coding, it’s much easier to grit through the challenging and confusing moments while coding.
Once that’s been decided, an essential part of the process that cannot be overstated is to take it slow and not overburden yourself. Passion projects can range from a few weeks to a few years. Due to them often being completed over on the side, your project shouldn’t be causing additional stress. If you find this the case, you might want to reevaluate if this project is a cause you’re interested in and if you have to invest in it correctly on top of your other obligations. It’s alright to change your mind and scrap a project or shelf it for now. If it’s something you care about, you’ll eventually return to finish it!
Final Thoughts
An engaged coder is more productive and innovative and helps influence these traits in their teams and projects. Their passion for their work and technology is lifelong and involves continuous learning. As languages, platforms, and methodologies continue to improve, engaged coders take the extra effort to interact with and learn from these changes. You will become a more engaged and passionate programmer and learner Through the five strategies discussed –open source projects, coding communities, competitions, mentorships, and personal projects. This type of engagement with coding is what will make not only better coders but also a more innovative technological landscape. Cultivating engagement through the outlined activities is not just a pathway to becoming a proficient coder. By embedding yourself deeply within the fabric of coding culture, you, as a programmer, become ready to lead with innovation and drive the industry forward. This approach to thoughtful engagement when coding ensures that your work’s impact will be larger.
