My first few days of mentoring

In the past few days I have helped folks with their various issues but I have learned as much or more about myself from my mentees as they have learned from me about coding.

I wish I had this site when I was first starting out programming back in 2001. We had books but unless you knew someone in your immediate circle finding someone to help you work through problems 1:1 was not likely.

I remember staying up all night trying every combination of variables and methods possible and still getting syntax errors. I would go to sleep and wake up and do it all again the next day.

Eventually I became more comfortable with the languages but I've never forgotten what is I think the most important part of coding: not making assumptions about what your code does.

When working on a block of code I always print as I go to verify that the code is working as expected. Automated testing is great but not for beginners. At first developers just need to focus on writing code that does what they expect it to do.

Print early and print often.