Pinned — 28 Oct 2025 #codingStreet-Smart Coding: 30 Ways to Get Better at Coding Without Losing Your Mind
I spent five years in college learning to code.
A stupid dissertation delayed my graduation. But that’s another story.
Most of my five-year program didn’t prepare me for real-world coding. My real coding journey began at my first job, with one Google search: “how to get good at coding.”
I found a lot of conflicting advice:
“Use comments”
“Don’t use comments”
“Do this”
“Don’t do that”
Arrggg!
It took years of trial and error to learn what worked.
I had to survive on-call shifts, talk to stakeholders, and say “no” politely. More importantly, I had to learn that coding takes more than just syntax.
That’s why I wrote Street-Smart Coding— a roadmap of 30 lessons I wish I had when I started. For every dev who’s ever typed “how to get better at coding” into Google or ChatGPT. (Back in my days, I didn’t have ChatGPT… Wait, I sound like a nostalgic grandpa…)
Preview of the first ~12 pages
Inside “Street-Smart Coding”
This isn’t a textbook. It’s a battle-tested guide for your journey from junior/mid-level to senior.
Some lessons are conventional.
Others were learned the hard way.
And a few are weird.
One lesson comes from a TV show. Nope, not Mr. Robot or Silicon Valley. That’s on Chapter #29. It will teach you about problem-solving.
You’ll learn how to:
Google like a pro
Debug without banging your head against a wall
Communicate clearly with non-tech folks
…and 27 more lessons I learned over ten years of mistakes.
I had an error message that made me scratch my head.
For a moment, I thought, “God, why am I doing this? I should start a garden or something.”
I copy-pasted the error message into Google.
StackOverflow didn’t help that much.
I was tempted to go to Copilot.
But I held my horses.
A few moments later, “Oooohh, here it is!”
A one-line code change fixed it.
Stupid Entity Framework Core!
I was in a rush a few days before and I missed a small detail:
I used a collection to map a one-to-one relationship.
Simple! I know. Only integration tests caught it.
For a moment, an error message made me want to quit.
A second later, I was back in the game.
Yet again. For the nth time.
I guess AI doesn’t give you that feeling—or does it?
Whether you code the old way or with AI, check out Street-Smart Coding—It covers debugging, testing, and many 28 more lessons to help you code like a pro.
After a couple of rounds of editing, I recruited a couple of friends as beta readers for Street-Smart Coding Manifesto. It’s not the first time someone’s read these ideas, but I like honest feedback before launching—to quiet the inner critic.
As usual, here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week:
#1. Keeping a blog showed me a corner of the web outside the big platforms. But I didn’t know about the smolweb and its protocols (5min), like gopher and finger.
#3. I used to argue passionately about languages, principles, and best practices. But over time, just like this coder, I stopped arguing with people (8min).
#4. Here’s an open letter (2min) from a teacher to his students, reflecting on how to navigate the current tech landscape.
(Bzzz…Radio voice) This email was brought to you by… Street-Smart Coding Manifesto. Preorder for just $1 and become a coder who stands out beyond syntax. If you’d like to support the work, contribute $5 or more, and I’ll thank you in the Acknowledgments.
From Derek Sivers’ Useful But Not True, you can always choose your next thought or reaction.
But yesterday, I failed to choose my next reaction after a frustrating purchase over the phone.
Then I hit a roadblock with a coding task.
I felt how my energy was depleted.
My sister showed me her phone with some hotel Instagram accounts.
“They all look the same. I wonder if it’s AI,” she told me.
She was visiting profiles of two small hotels in our city.
Same colors. Same layout.
No way to tell one from the other.
The day before, a friend showed us a thank-you note from a community campaign.
It looked just like the hotels’ Instagram posts.
It’s not just Instagram or our friend’s picture.
Open LinkedIn and you’ll see the same infographic all over the feed.
Same colors. Same layout. Same cartoon style.
