In today’s technology-accustomed era, speed is something no programmer or software firm can compromise on. Speed is one of the key attributes that define your coding skills and is also a key determinant in your ultimate success as a programmer.
While coders develop a diverse range of skills, they often neglect the importance of speed in their coding practices. This affects their goals and objectives as a programmer and leaves a very poor impression in their work profile. Hasty work often leaves the program littered with bugs, and a slow-paced coder will face issues with deadlines.
Today, I’ll take the opportunity to share five game-changing tips to improve your coding speed. Adding these valuable tips will not only help you save time but also produce higher quality code.
Why You Should Be Concerned About Speed
The rate at which you transform a solution into a functional program defines your caliber as a coder. The speed factor plays a central role in almost every aspect of programming, web development, and web design.
Whether you are rushing on a tight deadline, multitasking, building an innovative solution, or fixing bugs, speed always gives you an extra edge in performance.
Coding speed is also a key metric in software-firm interviews. Here, no matter how good you are with solutions, time is never on your side. It can be like having the solution right in front of you, but being unable to achieve it. As a coder myself, I have failed numerous times in interviews due to my formerly poor coding speed.
Here’s how I fixed it.
Building a Strong Base
Building a strong base of knowledge is the first step to getting your speed up to mark. Without a strong knowledge base for your coding, you may not be able to code fast enough to effectively build unique functions or solve problems in software.
The rule of thumb is that once you have a strong base, speed will come naturally. This means having your primary coding language at your fingertips while keeping yourself posted on updates and news about the language.
This may include online webinars, lectures, books, memory tools, and a whole lot of daily practice. Having an exceptional base also allows you to evaluate yourself, prevent bugs, and track your progress when coding on tight deadlines.
Focus on Time Management
A good time management formula directly enhances your coding speed. Many programmers who fail to manage their time well face the dilemma of working twice as hard but still failing to achieve their desired results before deadlines.
Using better time management to improve your speed requires accountability and structure, since you’ll need a proper roadmap to work up to a healthy speed when coding.
For this, it is best to estimate your average coding speed and set a timeframe for each project based on how long you expect it to take. Once you have a good estimate, you can increase or decrease your pace without losing track of your progress.
The second thing you need to focus on is determining your best output during a given time. Setting a minimum and a maximum output allows you to self-evaluate and reconfigure coding timelines during pressure. This also helps you maintain good levels of productivity, giving yourself confidence and assurance about your work.
Write Good Quality Code
Coding involves a diversity of disciplines, each defined by its purpose and potential. However, if you plan to write code for purposes other than recreational, then code quality is a critical aspect that you certainly need to pay attention to.
In programming, code quality is determined by a range of different attributes such as readability, reusability, maintainability, efficiency, modularity, and error proneness. Without setting a standard for your code, you simply cannot produce speed at the same time.
Readable code is code that is well-formatted and logically understood. Modularity focuses on how independent your pieces of code are from each other, while reusability defines the degree to which your code can be reproduced. If your code is maintainable, it can be easily altered or upgraded without any bugs.
Once you have mastered these key attributes, speed will come naturally, since you will now be confident that your code is well-documented, readable, and testable with no room for mistakes.
Streamline Your Workflow
For coders, planning your tasks ahead of time is always a winning policy. Before you set your hands on the keyboard, always contemplate what you are in for, what your objectives are, and what the reward in store is.
You can start by breaking your to-do list into smaller digestible sections. This will help you focus on each section separately and move on to the next in a systematic manner. Coding with a clear and focused state invigorates the mind, which complements the speed at which you put processed thoughts into written code. Segregating your workload based on priority and type creates a roadmap that organizes your work so can pick off each task without wasting time on which one to go for next.
This works exceptionally well with coders who have a plethora of tasks but very limited time to complete them.
Learn To Type Fast
Last but not least, you need to get your hands to a speed that corresponds with your mental work. Although typing speed doesn’t count as the most important factor in improving your coding speed, it certainly plays an imperative part in your overall coding performance.
The more proficient you are at typing, the less you’ll worry about tackling tight deadlines. Your typing should be fast enough that you no longer get distracted by looking at the keyboard. This may seem like a trivial lapse, but it adds up to become a big enough problem to get you off-track. You can overcome this problem by practicing, whether with typing tools or personal projects.
Also, learn how to make the keyboard as handy as possible with shortcut keys and hotkeys for code snippets.
Achieving More With Less
Follow these five proven tips to make the most of your time, skills, and knowledge and to unlock the ability of speed.
For myself, using these tips has helped me achieve several new milestones in programming and form a more refined sense of time management in my daily coding. These tips will not only help you step up in organizing and streamlining your daily programming activities but also help in managing other daily tasks that come with your work. Best of luck!
