Lately my Facebook feed is full of senior engineers from Amazon and other big companies sharing “proper” coding roadmaps. They tell you to start with one language, move on to the next, and follow a syllabus step by step. Sounds reasonable, but if I had followed that advice years ago, today’s version of me wouldn’t exist.
Five years back I tried FreeCodeCamp. The biggest struggle was typing line after line of HTML without any sense of when it would become a real website. Everything shifted in 2022 when ChatGPT arrived. That’s when I changed tactics: build simple web apps first, then iterate. Every release is a draft, and I assume the next one will be better. Believing the current build is “the best” just makes me arrogant—and slows growth.
Since then I’ve shipped, read, tinkered, and gradually understood more code. Now I see two extremes: one camp thinks you must hand-code everything end to end; the other believes AI can write it all so you don’t need to learn. I sit in the middle: you need a purpose in mind.
Know what you want to build, what problem you’re solving, and learn whatever serves that goal first. Theory can come later. It’s like travelling: pick the destination before you worry about transportation.
If you still feel unready, start anyway. Clarify what you want, then figure out how to make it real. Don’t wait until you’ve studied everything. AI today is like a travel buddy: it won’t walk for you, but it helps you move faster if you ask the right questions.
Hope this perspective gives anyone starting to code a nudge. Just build it, and every product you ship becomes the clearest marker of progress.