In my late days of programming, when I was learning a new programming language and technologies, the instructor was encouraging us to install an IDE for building projects and coding along. The first time I discovered VS Code as a perfect IDE and started coding using it, it really helped me to finish my project 3x faster, but I didn’t know what had been happening behind the scenes.
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Let’s look at this from another angle. Do you know how you will get hired by a tech company? “You’ll be asked some DSA questions,” you might say.
Well, that’s not how the whole process is going to take place; you probably don’t know about the way they’re going to ask you a question. When you’re invited to an interview as a software engineer, you’ll get asked some DSA questions without any doubts, but you’re not allowed to use any IDE. They might require you to solve the problem on a whiteboard or in Google Docs, which is completely nonsense.
At first, when I found out this fact, I also had no idea why would do so, as after hiring and working as an employee at their company, they will allow you to use VS Code or any other IDE of your choice, which sounds pretty stupid (doesn’t it?)
The drawbacks
As a matter of fact, every IDE has some awesome features that allow developers to stay productive and bring their projects to completion faster. Not to mention, some bittersweet features of IDEs that will ruin your problem-solving abilities include auto-error-checking and autocorrection, and these features make us let the problem go in one ear and out the other, not even considering why that particular error happened.
On top of this, IDEs have a learning curve of their own. Besides learning the programming language itself, you would also need to invest some time and effort into understanding and navigating the IDE. Juggling both simultaneously can be overwhelming and hinder your progress.
Imagine yourself in a coding interview or an exam. What would you do when they didn’t allow you to use your laptop or IDE? Would you be able to write a piece of code on a piece of physical paper or whiteboard?
I’m not against IDEs; quite the opposite. I personally use VS Code in my daily coding projects and tasks, which let me enhance my coding efficiency by 10x. What I am especially referring to here are the beginners who are just starting programming.
Your Task
Every day, seek some time to practice your coding skills on a piece of paper; if there’re any excuses, practice it on a whiteboard and explain the logic to walls; and again, if you find yourself out of budget and can’t afford a whiteboard and marker, try coding in Notepad, as there’s no error-checking or autocorrection.
After doing this, if you struggle and can’t do it without an IDE, develop the habit of taking a closer look at the errors you are making in the IDE; don’t just brush them off.
Gradually, you'll even disable the Intellisense of your IDE and write codes, and if there are any errors in your code, first try to find them yourself; if you can’t find them, enable Intellisense and see where you went wrong.
Develop a regular practice of it, and let me know if you found this helpful.
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