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 try to balance between non-fiction and fiction. But these days, I’m more into non-fiction books, especially about physical and mental health, and well-being in general. In the last quarter, I’ve read a fortress about it: Emotional Intelligence, Brain Wash, Sleep.
WHERE - Where do you prefer to read?
As a hack to read more books, I leave books on my kitchen table. So I found myself reading after breakfast as part of my morning routine.
WHEN - What time of day do you prefer to read?
I balance between non-fiction in the morning, when my energy is at its peak, and fiction before going to bed to unplug.
WHY - Why is your favourite book your favourite book?
I don’t have A favorite books. To answer this, I’d have to do it per categories:
For personal development, I’d go with Choose Yourself, the raw failure stories and the idea of taking care as a first step to choose oneself.
For finance, I’d go with The Richest Man in Babylon. It’s the format itself: a fables instead of a boring list of facts and recommendations.
A book that took me into a fascinating world
I read mostly non-fiction, not too many fascinating worlds, apart from our own worlds/heads. But I have on my reading list The Lord of the Rings.
A book that made me cry
It’s not a popular one, but I co-wrote with my sister a book to honor our mom’s memory: Nuestros Recuerdos in Spanish. She wrote a good-bye letter to my mom I can’t read. Every time I do it, I can’t help by cry.
A book that was thoughtful and profound
Ecclesiastes from the Bible. OMG! It reads like the memories of an eccentric millionaire. Someone who wasted his entire life amassing wisdom and fortune, just to find out it was pointless. Of course, with lots of drops of wisdom on every page.
A “comfort” book, read and re-read many times
Recently, I re-read Love in Times of Cholera. I read it back in school, but I didn’t enjoy it as much. Probably one of favorites by Gabriel García Márquez. I should have added it to my answer about favorite books.
Bonus - How do you go about selecting what you will read next?
I don’t have a clear strategy. I like to follow my curiosity or goals. These days, I’m interested in sleep, so that’s what I’m reading about in next months… and I like to write in the blank page of a book a list of all books mention inside it… and Ryan Holiday’s YouTube channel.
From time to time, I pack my best ideas into short and actionable books. If you’re curious, you can find them here.
This way, when you’re done eating, you can steal a few minutes from your routine to pick and read a book.
That’s the perfect excuse to reduce your scrolling and pause to ease your digestion.
Win-win for your body, mind, and spirit.
If you only want to show off a book count, re-reading sounds like a waste of time.
But I usually find myself coming to a good book more than once:
The first time because the subject was interesting.
And the next time because I really needed the book.
I’ve struggled with finding one passion and niching down.
Until I find out it’s OK to have multiple interests.
It was reassuring to learn there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m just driven to multiple interests.
Recently, to avoid the niching down trap, I’ve switched to “umbrella” all my interests under a mission or projects.
One of them is writing books.
A book is a perfect project to combine talents.
Design for the cover.
Research for the content. Storytelling for making it compelling. Copywriting for the sales page. Foreign languages for translations.
Marketing for promoting it.
Write as if nobody is reading and keep writing because you don’t know who’s doing it.
That’s the one of the mantras that has kept me writing for years.
