5 Smart Prompts for New Developers to Learn How to Code 10x Faster
Use tools like ChatGPT to boost your coding journey.
If equipped with the right prompt, you can make ChatGPT your biggest ally when learning how to code. By being specific, providing the correct context, or asking for examples, language models can make your learning process much more effective. Copy, adapt, and paste these prompts to make the best of your studying sections.
Here they are:
Prompt #1: Ask for a list of the most important concepts of the language/framework you’re learning and why those concepts are important.
Example of prompt:
“List the 10 most important concepts in JavaScript. Each item in the list should contain an explanation of what it is and why it’s important.”
Customization tip: you could ask for a shorter list with a deeper explanation.
Prompt #2: To grasp the most complex concepts, provide more context stating you’re a new developer, and ask for an example.
Example of prompt:
“Given I’m a new developer, explain “Asynchronous Programming and Promises” in JavaScript. Besides the explanation, please also add an example so I can understand it better.”
Customization tip: if you still find the concept complex, you can replace the beginning of the prompt with “Pretend I’m a 5-year-old, and explain…”, or other levels of age/expertise so you understand.
Prompt #3: Practice a new concept by asking for a code challenge and a pseudocode so you can start from it.
Example of prompt:
“Give me a code challenge to learn “Closures” in JavaScript, with an explanation of what I should do, and create a pseudocode in the form of code comments describing each step. Don’t include the final implementation.”
Customization tip: you could adjust the level of difficulty of the challenge.
Prompt #4: Ask for a challenging project idea so you can practice the new programming language and its concepts. Also, make sure to request to break it into smaller steps, so you can follow along.
Example of prompt:
“Give me a challenging project idea to learn JavaScript, it should cover the most important concepts of the programming language. Please break it down into smaller steps, so I can program it sequentially.”
Customization tip: you could first ask for a list of projects with a brief explanation of each, and then continue to use the prompt on the one you liked the most.
Prompt #5: If you find a block of code on the internet that you can’t understand, you can ask the language model for clarification.
Example of prompt:
“Please comment on every line of the following code explaining what it does:
“let arr = [2, 3, 5];
let result = arr.reduce(function(a, b){
return a * b;
});
console.log(result);”“
Customization tip: you could emphasize what you didn’t understand (for example, the reduce() method).
Conclusion
I hope these prompts will help you to skyrocket your coding journey. Learn the fundamentals of the new programming language, and then practice, practice, and practice even more with code!
Thank you very much for reading this article, and I hope you’ve found real value in it. If you want more Prompt Engineering tips you can: 1) Follow me on Medium, and 2) Subscribe to my newsletter.
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