A friend of mine, V, gave a talk yesterday on dynamic web programming with Python and Flask. The technical part of the talk was great (he built a URL shortener in 45 minutes) but I’ve been thinking about the philosophical bit he talked about at the end. I got two big points out of it.

First he said, “The only way to learn web dev is to do it. Write 100K lines of code and you’ll be a better web programmer.” There is no substitute for writing code. You can read books and watch videos, but nothing is a substitute for writing code. This Rollins Band song sums it up.

His other big point was, “If you get stuck, ask people questions about how to get unstuck.” There’s a lot of meaning in this sentence. First, you need to have tried hard enough to get stuck. You’ve banged your head against the problem and have come up empty. Next, V’s point implies you have a community where people are receptive to questions. Community is so important to programming that I don’t think I need to convince many people of this. Last, don’t beat yourself up and wallow in frustration when you have a problem. I like the philosophy “You must Try, and then You Must Ask”