Programming is a versatile skill that comes with practice and experience. As the technology continues to evolve, only those programmers can guarantee their success that are always ready to learn and adapt to changing technology. Hence, it is nowadays important that the aspiring programmers or even those with an experience keep on looking for ways to improve their programming skills.

This article gives you 7 top-notch ways by which you can become a better programmer.

1. Practise

If you want to become a better programmer practise coding as much as you can. When you start writing programs on your own you learn how to do everything from scratch. From understanding the problem domain to designing the algorithm, implementing the code, handling the errors and using different ways to solve a particular problem, you will get a chance to explore the whole process of writing the program on your own. Another good thing about this is that if you ever get stuck there are many programming assignment help online services that can guide you in finding your mistakes and proceeding with your code. Remember that you can learn from your mistakes only when you practice enough.

2. Identify your learning model

How do you learn in the best way? A lot of people today learn from watching videos about programming whereas some people still prefer learning from a book or a website. It is all up to you which way you feel comfortable. Many people learn by working with different programmers adopting their practices and habits because they think that it is an easy way to become a better programmer like them. You can also go for a one-on-one tutoring or just join an online course so that you can clarify your programming concepts. There are many ways to learn to code but what’s important is that it should fulfill your learning goals.

3. Broaden your horizons

You only learn better when you step out of your comfort zone. In case of programming, this implies not sticking only to one programming language that you have been working on for a long time. Try and learn different programming languages to understand various programming features and possibilities. Every programming language can give you different ideas on how to solve a problem in better ways. So, if you are comfortable with object-oriented languages try working on procedural languages or functional languages. Learn how to port codes, study different operating systems and multiply your learning curve.

4.    Simplify your code

Try practicing to write simplified code that is easier to debug and maintain. This is one of the first identifications of a good programmer that anyone else can easily read or understand his code. Here are 4 simple tips that can help you in simplifying your code.

• Break a large program into small blocks of code. Try dividing a program into a set of functions or into small blocks of code with a meaningful name. This will not overwhelm you if you try to debug that program.
• Write comments more often. Writing comments before every function class blog or method describing their functionality is a good option.
• Write down your goals. Before you start coding make sure you know the requirements clearly. Make a list of things that your program should be able to do and use this as a base for your coding.
• Use descriptive naming conventions. An expression such as ‘weekly_pay = hours_worked * hourly_pay_rate;’ is much easier to understand than an expression written as ‘a=b*c;’

5.    Read Often 

Reading always widens your perspective and thus reading books on programming can definitely give you a lot of insights on how you can become a better programmer. Read programs written by other programmers and try to understand how they work. Try finding patterns in their code, dry run them and try to understand the different methodologies used by different programmers so that when you sit to solve a problem on your own you can at least start easily.

6. Create a Project 

If you think that you have practiced enough use your knowledge by creating a project, whether it is a simple mobile application or a website. Share your little projects with others and let them use it. This will help you gain a lot of confidence in your coding skills. You can also start contributing your code to open source project such as GitHub. This will give you an opportunity to learn from others codes as well.

7. Testing is important

Writing code is incomplete if you don’t test it against some inputs to check its efficiency. Use various combinations of inputs, the common ones, and the uncommon ones. Test the extremes, the meaningless values, and the incorrect values as well to check if your code can handle these cases or not. Another thing that you can do is just step through your code in a debugger to identify the week areas of your code.

Every programmer can become a better programmer

Being a better programmer does not only mean that you learn different programming languages. You also need to have a thorough knowledge of various programming concepts such as prototyping, recursion, testing as well as data structures and algorithms. Apart from this the more real work you do, the better. So, try doing a code review, create new projects or implement unit testing. Do not stop yourself from trying out new things.

Author Bio: Rruchi Shrimalli is a Content Marketing Manager for Transtutors.com, and several other websites. She is a writer and a journalist at heart, and has been writing articles on various aspects of the Education domain since 2010. Her articles have been published at Shiksha.com, India.com, and Employment News among others.

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