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.
To make my doomscrolling session from yesterday feel more productive:
4 random thoughts
#1. Writing an About page is the hardest part of starting a blog or newsletter.
#2. Welcoming DMs on social media feel like a preamble to sales pitches. What are you trying to sell me, dude? Let’s skip this part. Maybe because I don’t like sales calls.
I just finished reading Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in Times of Cholera.
Here are five drops of wisdom I couldn’t help but underline (my own translations):
#1.
“Wisdom comes when it’s no longer of any use.”
I’ve often heard people say, “I wish I knew what I know now five years ago.”
#2.
“The weak would never enter the kingdom of love, it is a harsh and miserly kingdom, and women surrender only to men of brave spirit, because they inspire the security they so desperately crave in life.”
A wise friend has less stylistic version, “coward men don’t date attractive women.”
Replace the nouns appropriately.
#3.
“Say yes. Even if you’re dying of fear, even if you later regret it, because you’ll regret it all your life if you say no.”
OK, dating advice an aunt shared with her niece in the story.
“Live without regrets,”a friend told me, the other day.
#4.
“The world is divided between those who shit well and those who shit badly.”
Don’t call it content. Don’t write just to fill a platform.
Instead, write for yourself.
Write as if you were working in your garage with the door open.
You wouldn’t expect everyone, but the right people to see your work.
If you choose a platform, think of every piece as a lottery ticket or practice session.
Not every lottery ticket is a winner.
Not every practice session is perfect.
At the peak of my burnout in 2023, I wrote a note this note on my phone:
“I want to wake up before the alarm rings. I want to wake up motivated and eager to work. I want to follow my morning routine: workout, writing, silence, and reading.”
At the time, finding a way out felt impossible.
It felt there was no light and no tunnel.
I thought I’d never recover.
But here I am now.
Burnout is gone.
I wake up to exercise, read, write…plus do some freelancing work.
There’s still uncertainty and fear, but my mornings don’t feel the same.
