I'd take this further and add that you should always be doing something wrong in the pursuit of more than just code. As a novice programmer you can spin your wheels learning every best practice without building much of anything. And HN often compounds this problem - look at every 'You're doing it wrong ...' post. Instead, I think you should make something crappy and make the rookie mistakes. Overtime, simply look to improve bit by bit.
I imagine someone will protest this idea, saying that there's already enough crappy software out there, that the world doesn't need any more technical debt. But this fails to realize that technical debt is a good thing in someways- it's a by-product of learning and crashing through boundaries.
In a way, technical debt is analogous to carbon emissions- yes, by itself it's a bad thing. But in the larger scope, carbon emissions are a by-product of industrialization, a process which has vastly improved our quality of life. Technical debt, like carbon emissions, is a sign of progress.
I imagine someone will protest this idea, saying that there's already enough crappy software out there, that the world doesn't need any more technical debt. But this fails to realize that technical debt is a good thing in someways- it's a by-product of learning and crashing through boundaries.
In a way, technical debt is analogous to carbon emissions- yes, by itself it's a bad thing. But in the larger scope, carbon emissions are a by-product of industrialization, a process which has vastly improved our quality of life. Technical debt, like carbon emissions, is a sign of progress.