What I wish people new about coding

wish-knew.md

What I wish people knew about coding, including beginner programmers.

• Coding isn't mystical.
  • Don't revere developers.
• Getting started is hard, especially if you don't have a community of real, live people to help you out.
  • StackOverflow doesn't count. Meetups do.
• The gap between the code you see on GitHub and running code is often massive. If you can't get a relatively simple codebase running quickly, it's probably because the developer assumes a lot about your system, not because you've done something wrong.
• If code looks messy and scatterbrained, it probably is.
• Read Ruby books. Avdi Grimm and Sandi Metz have a lot of important things you should read, whether you write Ruby or not.
• So-called '10x programmers' leave 10x the technical debt of other programmers. The 10x myth has a cost.
  • Don't revere developers.
• There's no such thing as a 'real programmer' versus a 'not-real programmer'. People who code more at the system-level are not better than people who code at the browser level. Don't let anyone tell you differently.
• Startup culture isn't all desirable.
• When women and people of color express that they are marginalized in tech culture, listen to them.
  • Act on their suggestions.

Awesome!