As a developer, you're continually pushing to learn new skills and improve. But even the best developers make mistakes along their journey. So, what sets a great developer apart from an average one? It's the ability to learn from other developers' experiences and mistakes.

In this article, I'll discuss four mistakes that I made in my journey and I'll also give advice on how you can avoid them. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting, this will assist you in learning from my mistakes and avoiding repeating them in your journey.

Not Building Enough Projects

I'd say the biggest mistake I made as a developer was not building enough projects. I constantly switched between those "Build XYZ with React/Vanilla JS" tutorials but never managed to complete a single one.

I realized that this was a huge mistake when I decided to monetize my skills. When I started to look for jobs and freelancing clients, I found the first thing it needs is a strong portfolio with awesome self-made projects.

My advice to you would be: Build as you're learning and build on your own.

Projects not only serve as proof of your work, but they act as a motivation for you to keep learning, and also as a test to see if you're actually learning anything or not, so keep building them at every stage of learning.

And never follow a tutorial for building a project! You're not building anything if you're following a tutorial. It's completely fine to you ask for help wherever you get stuck.

Learn Multiple Things at a Time

This is a common mistake when you're just starting your journey in tech, especially if you're a self-taught developer just like me.

I had no clue what to learn when I started my journey. I kept switching languages and tried to learn multiple languages at the same time (that too, Java and C++ 😂) and that was a big mistake.

When we try to learn multiple stuff at the same time, we think we can save time. But the reality is: There are no such shortcuts, you've to give everything the time it requires.

You'll end us wasting your time trying to learn multiple things at once as you might not understand even one properly. So, learn a language or framework at a time, and enjoy the process!

Learning From Outdated Resources

This might not be as common as the previous two, but I made it, and I believe it's important to mention it here.

When I was new to tech, I thought any video that has more views is a great resource to learn something, and that's true in most cases, but not when the video is 5 years old!

I agree that the basics don't change, but if a course is too old, majorly it becomes irrelevant, and it's always better to learn from the latest resources. Also, as beginners, we're not ready to encounter scary bugs in the learning phase.

So, I'd recommend you should learn from the latest resources as much as possible and avoid outdated resources.

I remember once I followed even a roadmap that was 5 years old and it was something like HTML -> CSS -> JavaScript -> jQuery -> PHP... 😂

Not Starting a Blog Early

This is the mistake that I've realized recently, and I've finally started to correct it!

Many of you might ask why this is a mistake. Well, it might not look like a big mistake, but if you do start writing blogs early in your developer journey, it will help you a lot.

It helps you improve your writing and communication skills, it allows you to build an audience, and potentially your future customers for your digital products/SaaS, and it might even help you land your first developer job as well!

But what should you write, especially as a beginner? Share your knowledge, document your journey, try to explain complex topics which you found hard in an easier manner, and there are many more things!

So, doesn't matter whether you're a beginner or a seasoned developer, I'd highly recommend you to start writing!

Conclusion

In conclusion, I'd say that no developer journey is perfect. As I said earlier, everyone makes some mistakes at one stage or another. But what differentiates a great developer from an average one is the ability to learn from others. And I've tried to help you with that through this blog.

I hope sharing my mistakes helps you avoid them in your journey.

Thanks for reading! It was my first article, so if you found it useful, please consider giving a like, and following me for more such articles. Also, make sure to share your opinions in the comments!