Programming is an art. Practice your art: Ajay Tripathi

Amity University

Hi! I am currently getting ready to become a mentor in Google Code-In and take part in Google Summer of Code. If you wish to become a programmer/developer and you are about to join a college, here are my tips to make your Bachelors degree fruitful.

Coding is easy, People are hard

One of the many things that you'll only be able to do while you are in the college is meet a lot of interesting people. In my opinion, college is the best time to learn the art of working with people. I would recommend reading "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie, and work on the art of influencing people in the next four years of your bachelors.

Yes, yes, working with people is a must if you want to become a good developer.

Join a Community

I don't mean a community in your college. I live in Delhi, and I am interested in learning Python, so I joined PyDelhi, a group of Python developers who live in Delhi. I recommend everyone to join a community devoted to their interest. Why?

• You make like-minded friends.
• You learn the best practices in the field from the experts in the community, this helps you save time and save yourself from reinventing the wheel.
• You'll constantly get involved in amazing projects and learn very fast from them.

I use meetup.com to find communities near me. If you can't find a community of your interest, start one with friends.

Programming is an art. Practice your art

You can read about painting as much as you want, but unless you start to paint, you learn nothing. Same is with programming. Read as many books as you want. Unless you start writing a code and solve its problems, you are doing it wrong.

There are 3 ways to do this effectively:

• Solve your personal problems with code
• Contribute to open source projects
• Start Competitive Coding

Contribute to open source - it's a must

In my opinion, this is the best way to go about learning after you are done with the basics.

Why?

• You learn the best and latest practices of the industry
• You get to work on a software that is running in production

Know the purpose of college

• You go to the college to meet people and make contacts. That's the only reason.
• If you go with the expectation to find a job because you went to the college or
• expect your teachers or seniors to teach you, you'll be disappointed.

You are on your own and your future is in your hands only. You can drive the metaphorical car of life or you can be a passenger in it. Your choice.

Keep the basics strong

You must have heard this a hundred times, well, because it is that important. I recommend get a good grasp of basics of networking, data structure and operating systems. To get started, I recommend Jwasham's Coding-Interview-University.

Start before you are ready

Many times, I meet first-year students who are not confident to start with a project or help in contributing to a project because they feel that they are not ready. This holds them from learning for a long time.

I can understand while starting with something new can be scary, but I really recommend that you should not let that fear hold you back.

Hence, I always advise my juniors to start before they are ready. You'll find your knowledge gaps as you go, and you'll be able to improve while you are doing the project - i.e. learn on the fly.

Interest is useless without action

I meet a lot of students who tell me that they are interested to learn. They haven't started anything yet, but they want to start. Well, I have such friends in the first year and the fourth. If you don't work, if you don't start with something, nobody is interested in your "interest". Think of it this way - you can't make excuses at the time of interview, either you have a work experience or you do not. It's simple.

I hope this should help and motivate you to start coding. Good luck!

About the Author:

My name is Ajay Tripathi. I am doing my Bachelors in Computer Science from Amity University. I am in the third year, with the determination to get placed in a good company. I did my second-year internship in IIT Bombay.