The Fearful Developer
How often do you find yourself in a position to be able to try something that will literally have no consequence to it whatsoever but choose, instead, to ask someone else if it will work?
One of the most frequent questions I see on the PHPDN Forums is:
Can I do ... ?
Another very common question is:
What will happen if I do ... ?
Most responses to those questions, from me and the many frequent members of the forum, is:
Have you tried it yet?
To which the most common answer is:
No because I am not sure what would happen so I wanted to ask so I could be sure.
What exactly is the harm in trying something out before you ask? I mean, literally, the worst that you could possibly do (as a new developer) is to freeze your browser with a never ending loop or massive memory use issue in which you would either A) close and reopen the browser; B) restart your local server; or C) restart your computer. Seriously, is that really that bad of a price to pay to find out something on your own?
Sidebar: Something that I need to point out is that I always, always, always recommend that any developer that is doing more that static development (HTML, CSS, Javascript) set up a server on their own computer (this is known as a local server) and create for themselves a development environment (with error reporting set to the strictest level possible and error displays set to on) that will allow the developer to actually code and test without the need for a hosted server. This is a crucial step for any developer and I find it hard to believe that anyone with a local server would ever have to ask a question about something possibly working when they could actually code it and try it first.
With that, I must say that the fear that many developers code with it disturbing. We are producers of code. That is what we do. We make things do things that need to be done so someone doesn't have to do that things themselves. How hard, or scary, can it be to actually try something?
If there is one bit of advice I could give any new developer, it is this: After setting up your local server and development environment... start playing and learning. You will make yourself a much better developer when you can code, F5 and see what you did without having to fire open your FTP client, upload the new code/file and Ctrl+F5 to see if the parse error you just had has been cleared.
So I dare you, n00b, to take a step in the direction of professional development... set up something yourself, try something yourself and prove to yourself that you are not too scared to actually learn the language you are developing in.
FTR: -1/3
