How To Become A Successful Programmer?

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How To Become A Successful Programmer?

I have heard many novice programmers saying I want to get better at programming but there is hardly a slight improvement in their skills. I have observed that most of them say they want to get better but that is just a wish. They do not really mean it. They mere wish to improve their skills. They do not work for it. Your wish does not guarantee that you will become a successful programmer.

Many other people who have developed an interest in computer programming do not know how to reach to a point where they will be called successful programmers. They either keep wandering in the middle of nowhere or just give up. The same response is for them too as it was for the wishers.

Your interest does not guarantee that you will succeed.

Programming is a field which requires intensive work to master. Along with improving your technical knowledge of programming, you need to work on your interest. You need to develop a habit of not giving up. You need to make your brain believe that it is capable of the things it thinks it is not. You need to know how to move forward and how to keep moving forward. You need to convince your inner self that one day you will become the person who they call a successful programmer.

I am not saying that technical knowledge is not necessary at all and you concentrate all your efforts on the non-technical things. What I am trying to say is that in order to get better at programming, a non-technical parallel process will help you. I am calling it a non-technical process for no good reason. You can call it whatever you want just go with the flow.

So what is that non-technical process? It is nothing but a few habits and characteristics. The process is not specific to programming. It can be used for anything you want to achieve. It can be used to make more money, to get a sound health or make your relationships better. The reason I am calling it a process is that you need to keep practicing it. It never ends. Being a successful programmer is your goal and this is the process you need to repeat until you reach your goal.

The process has four key elements which are given below in the order it works for me. If you have a good reason to change the order, please let us know too. There is a comment section at the end of the page. Interact with us, we don't bite.

Four elements of the process:

1. Burning Desire
2. Faith
3. Imagination
4. Persistence

1. Burning Desire

Desire is defined in oxford dictionary as a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen. Desire is the first reason why we do anything. It give us a direction to move on. It is desire which motivates us to do something. 

But the desire itself it not enough for success. Desires are often replaced by other desires. In order to achieve what you desire for, you must have a burning desire not just a desire. Such a burning desire which leads to take decision and get up instead of to a state of indecision. You must feel the urge to get whatever you want to. You must develop extreme interest, an interest which could not be diminished by procrastination.

How to cultivate a burning desire to become a successful programmer?

First of all, convince your mind that there is no backing out. Promise yourself that you will never quite. Close all the doors that will help you to escape.

Try to connect with people somehow who are already better than you in programming. Dan Peña, a successful businessman and a multimillionaire says:

Show me your friends and I'll show you your future.

People you surround yourself with always have an influence on your personality. Surround yourself with people better than you to get inspiration and also with the people who are not as good as you. People below you in your circle will help you see your progress and will learn from you. Make new connections on LinkedIn and join programming communities on Facebook, Reddit, etc but keep a balance in your friend zone. Not only surround yourself with only successful people and not only add people who want to learn from you.

Next, reinforce your mind to believe that you are serious with programming, it is not a joke. Surround your self with things which motivates you like print quotes and image of brilliant programming gurus and put them up around your house. Changing desktop and mobile backgrounds to motivating wallpapers really boost the desire.

There is nothing better than reading if you want to get good at something. Of course practice is necessary but reading is the first step. Practice comes next. Read books related to your topic, attend seminars, listen to pod casts etc. Most importantly, do read how did successful programmers get there and what are they doing now. Read their success stories. It will help you not to lose your interest.

There are a lot of ways to keep your desire alive. Search for them and follow them or be creative and create your own ways. There is no wrong or right way. What matters the most is which works for you.

2. Faith

Faith is complete trust or confidence in someone or something. I am talking a religious faith or something. I am talking about faith in your abilities to succeed, self-confidence. You will never ever get the things that you believe you cannot.

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind is a wonderful book by Dr. Joseph Murphy who describe in details how thoughts and believes are imprinted on subconscious mind and how these thoughts gain physical shape in the real world.

Confident people do not hesitate to ask questions. The more you ask, the more you learn. It gives you the ability to say yes to right things and no to wrong and inappropriate things. Confidence makes you able to overcome any sort of fear, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of misfortune, fear of what others think, fear of loss of love and relationship. It is self-confidence and faith in yourself which can make you set your goals high. If you believe that you will succeed, you will.

3. Imagination

If you can imagine yourself where you want to be, you will be there one day. Imagination is considered one of keys to success. All successful people are dreamers. If you can imagine something in your possession, you will have it. Either it is a skill, fortune, good relationship or anything else. Just believe in yourself, work for it and chase you dreams.
Let's make it more related to programming. Powerful imagination helps a lot in logic building. I have told you each concept of programming is a piece of puzzle. If you want to solve a problem, you need to combine these pieces. While you learn the basic concepts of programming, give each concept a unique shape in your imagination. For example, if statement would have one shape and a loop would have another shape. Recall these shapes when you need to solve a problem.
To make the process more interesting, add sounds to it. As the two magnets make a sound when they come together, you imagine similar sounds when you combine two pieces of puzzle successfully.
Programming is not a rocket science. Any combination that might sound perfect might not work in real. Don't give up. Keep trying. Try different combinations. The imagination faculty of mind gets better with practice. The more you practice, the more powerful your imagination becomes. One day you will reach to a point where you will make more than half of the logic to solve a problem while reading or listening to a problem statement.
I would recommend you to read the power of your subconscious mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy. It presents sound proofs the the imagination works and teaches you how to think.

4. Persistence

Persistence something that if you don't have, you will never succeed. It does not matter how good you are at logic building, it does not matter how powerful your imagination is, it does not matter you have a burning desire or not. If you are not persistent, you will never succeed.

Jack of all trades, master of none...

In consistency is like a parasite. It eats all your efforts and all your hard work you done. I have listed inconsistency as first in 5 Mistakes That I Have Made. I know how inconsistency pushes one backward. How it downgrades the progress and how it vanish most of the efforts one make. It is like an income tax. You work to make money for yourself and family and the govt takes it share for no reason. There is nobody who is happy to pay taxes.
If you want to be a good programmer, stick to programming. Never change your field. Learning how to code is a tedious task. Take your time to decide one programming language to learn and stick to it. Once you think you know how to code, then start learning other languages.
Remember, each and every concept is like a piece of puzzle. It does not matter what kind of color it has, if it fits somewhere, it will work. Same is the case with different programming languages. All basic concepts work the same in all languages, just the syntax is different. Once you become a master of a programming language, then learning a new language becomes a matter of time. You just need to get familiar with its syntax.

Recommended Readings:

• How To Improve Logic Building Skills In Programming? 
• 10 Tips to improve your coding skills
• How to Code? Learn These 5 Basic Concepts of Programming
• What is Object-Oriented Programming? The concept of Class and Objects