Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

General Discussion

Posted by Daniel Maia
Daniel Maia
6,228 Points

Programmer Life Style

After completing a number of courses on TeamTreeHouse and playing around with a number of difference languages for Web and Mobile development.

I wonder how programmers are able to sit and program something without hardly looking things up or watching youtube videos to understand a specific concept.

How do they do it? How to improve to get to a stage like that and become a real professional programmer?

Simon Coates
Simon Coates
28,695 Points

As Jonathan Grieve notes, you will be looking stuff up. But you can't look everything up. I think it's worth trying to remember the big ideas (patterns, ideas behind languages). if you have a sense of what something is, or how it behaves, then it's easy to break down into what you have to do, and look up any little bits of syntax. Once you've looked up and typed the syntax a couple hundred times, you'll be quicker.

Jay Padzensky
Jay Padzensky
4,731 Points

I'd say programming languages are similar to spoken languages- even if you're fluent in one, there are always still words you don't know, and some you do but don't know how to use. So we look them up. Over time, your capacity and abilities improve, but I imagine it is impossible to know every nuance of a language. Good luck!

2 Answers

Jonathan Grieve
MOD
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,254 Points
Jonathan Grieve
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,254 Points

Looking things up will be a regular part of your life as a programmer so don't be afraid to do that as you go. Most languages have excellent documentation to help you choose the methods and functions your apps will need.

Inevitably some people will have a better memory than others when it comes to learning to code but at the end of the day the only thing that will help you to hone your skills is practice. :-)

Daniel Maia
Daniel Maia
6,228 Points
Daniel Maia
Daniel Maia
6,228 Points

I suppose you guys are right. My thought is when I have an idea for a particular project/task, how do you go about knowing the best way to approach it. In other words, the starting code to the finished result.

This crossed my mind whilst I was working through the Android course about Adapters for Recycler Views. Now, there are multiple things to considering and remember in terms of creating the layout, then using adapters to inflate the views and using ViewHolders to contain the data to then display the view.

How do you get to understand a particular subject? Do you keep watching the same video till it's drilled into your head and understand or do you watch, try it, watch it again etc... till you do understand?

Simon Coates
Simon Coates
28,695 Points

i think pluralsight has a video series on how to progress (see here ). I wasn't sure about all of their advise, and if you watch it, i'd be interested to hear if you differ (fyi, pluralsight has a free trial and the course is fairly short). People may disagree about the best way to make the leap from beginner to having a profound intuition about program design. I'd just note that you can't learn anything new from only seeing your own code.