We all know that getting good at one thing is difficult. Today I want to share something with you, something that has improved my thinking and made me a better programmer.

First to first, the title said something about a Codeslinger? What that is? Simple... the definition of a Codeslinger is someone who is literally like shooting(coding) from the hip.

Because they are two kind of people out there in our business.
The one who really wants to know why, with something like:
"WTF? why is this working?",
and the one who is like:
"Oh.. ok it works, fine."

We all came to points where we're over asked, where we are ready to complain and give up to understand something because otherwise it would break us out of our comfort zone.

You know, it's quite easy to shoot a Revolver from the hip and fire out all 6 shoots and maybe you hit the target. Maybe you completed the task like that and pat yourself on the shoulder. But doing this for the most of your time makes you a Codeslinger.

A Codeslinger will always just try to accomplish a challenge, most of the time he will only have luck and succeed or fail hard.

I'm telling you it's okay to try, but it's not okay to do it over and over again. You have to decide for yourself if I am the one who is afraid of learning new things and cheating my way through my career or if I am the one who takes the challenge of getting better and better until you get the salary, that you deserve, or the job position that fits to your skill level.

What i mean is, when you Code something, no matter what it is, if it is a simple Todo-App or a big scale Company software, it's highly important that you should keep in mind, you don't know everything from the hip.

If your not sure about how to use this Tool you are using. Not confident about a line of Code you just copy pasted from Stack Overflow or somewhere else, then i can tell you one simple trick that will maybe change the way how you approach the stuff day by day.

Force yourself to understand, till you understand...
Become a Sniper, one bullet one target, one hit.

This will make you better, will make you less in a "i can try it" and more in a "i can do it"

There is one simple rule you should never forget:
"if you could write it yourself, you are allowed to use it"