Panic set in as I watched the site crash in real time.

All of the usual feelings you get - sweaty palms, racing heart, that "crawling skin" feeling - you know, the "Oh Shits" as I call them.

My boss had left for the day, and nobody else was there to help me - but guess what - the world didn't end and I fixed the issue.

It's inevitable... You're going to make mistakes - here are 3 (of a whole bunch) that I made in my first year as a junior developer:

You're Going to "Break" Something

For me, it was an ASP.NET website.

It was my first time working with C#, Visual Studio, and MVC - throw in some Docker and I was in over my head. I had plenty of experience with PHP and Apache, but the idea of compiling and uploading binary files was foreign to me to say the least. I followed the documentation - "simply delete the old binary files and add the new ones and you are good to go" - except I wasn't. I know now that one of those binary files (beats me which one) is crucial to making the website run - and it only comes from running the dotnet build command - not the dotnet publish command.

The lesson learned here is that you don't know, what you don't know - and you can't know it, until you know it - which is going to happen all of the time in your programming career.

You're Going To Delete Something You Shouldn't Have

Microsoft Access is a strange bird when it comes to the software world.

It doesn't lend itself to Version Control very well (although there are some great options out there) and as such leaves a window for accidental deletion wide open. I was grabbing the latest version of the ".accdb" file and attempting to move it to a few different folders on my machine and the clients machine via remote connection. I just so happened to drag the new file to the location of the old file thinking it was the correct location - removing the old version forever - oopsie!

In the end, there's nothing I can do about it - so I can't let it worry me - just roll with the punches and deal with the fact that an issue may arise in the future (but it hasn't yet, so that's a good sign).

You're Going To Say Something Stupid

You're a junior developer - so you don't know everything and that's ok.

There is a very good chance you are going to work with industry veterans that speak in terms you've never heard and assume you know things that you don't. I can't begin to count the amount of times stupid mumbo jumbo came out of my mouth over the first year of being a developer. The thing is, pretending you know something that you don't is only going to hurt you in the long run.

My advice on this - get used to the uncomfortable feeling of asking for help or for clarification - you are going to save everybody a lot of time and frustration.

You are going to make mistakes - it comes with the territory and is expected of a junior developer - just make sure you learn from every one you make.