Miscellaneous

Technical Sophistication

Technical sophistication is a concept borrowed from Michael Hartl, author of the popular Ruby on Rails Tutorial. As Hartl puts it, "technical sophistication is the combination of hard and soft skills that make it seem like you can magically solve any technical problem" (as illustrated in the xkcd comic below).

source: xkcd.com

When you're first learning to code, the command line and version control are not intuitive, error messages and documentation are often confusing, and when you get stuck it can feel like it's you against the world. But as you improve your technical sophistication, the tools will become more natural, error messages and documentation will become more meaningful, and you'll have a better feel for what to do when you encounter an unexpected problem.

Your technical sophistication will improve with experience, especially if you treat the obstacles you encounter (and there will be many) as opportunities to learn.

General Tips

Congratulations, you've reached the end of the guide. Now you're ready to go forth and do great things!

But before you do, here are a few final tips to encourage and inspire you in your coding journey:

• Remember that coding is best learned by doing. Get as much practice as you can playing around with data and pet projects that interest you (whether or not they're work-related).
• Stick with it and don't get frustrated. Learning to write good code takes time, but you will start to see rapid improvement quickly.
• Don't be afraid to ask for help. Use online resources and the community of coders at Steer—there are lots of people here who are happy to help you out. On the flipside of that, share your knowledge and be willing to help others.
• Have fun, be creative, and don't be afraid to break the rules!