Studying programming

How I realized I had always studied the wrong way.

Another story in this saga of becoming a programmer. When I started programming a few years ago, I was very lost. Wait, there’s a path to follow? Programming logic, then… and that “then” is the obstacle. You don’t know what to study or what’s relevant to your career. That’s why many beginners give up, or take a long time to find a path that matters. Imagine a beginner studying everything in sight or, worse, following a step-by-step guide without really understanding what the tool is, what it does, and what problems it can solve. That was my daily study routine. After a while, talking with my brother, he showed me a new technology. I liked it and went to study it. But there was a problem: I had no self-management. How could I study without the main controls, focus and persistence? That’s how I spent years without really understanding the subject, and I became an average programmer. I didn’t know how to use the tool properly and didn’t know all of its power, so I got very frustrated with my technical ability. I went through some companies that made that frustration worse, and I couldn’t identify my mistakes. I always worked hard to improve, studying a lot after work, and still didn’t evolve. I kept joining and leaving companies with the same frustration of not being able to deliver something of value. In my quest to improve as a programmer, I ended up in an interview with a tech lead, Marco, but that’s a topic for another post. That’s when I discovered that I had been studying the wrong way: I had no foundation in logic, no soft skills, and no hard skills. I found this out when I started following his mentorship, where I learned that a programmer needs a toolbox to grow as a professional. Only after a long time did I understand the real way forward.