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.
One LinkedIn post pushed me to quit social media for a week.
I’ve been writing on LinkedIn (and other social blogs) for two years. And to “grow” my account as a creator, I’ve been following common advice: “be your own case study” and “engage after posting.” I questioned that advice, yet still spent an hour a day engaging.
I had two wake-up calls:
Noticing my phone time. 2h18min on average the week before.
Finding a post inviting people to disappear from the Internet without apologies, announcements, or guilt. I did that—kind of.
For a week, I stayed away from anything with a feed: Medium, LinkedIn, dev.to, YouTube, Reddit…But I still scheduled my weekly content for the platforms where I write.
When planning my feed-free week, I thought I needed an app/website blocker. But starting the first day with an intention was enough. “No social media today.”
Lesson #1: Don’t simply ban social media, replace them with conscious activities instead.
Don’t make scrolling your go-to activity
I hadn’t realized how scrolling had changed my behavior.
On day two, I was on a weekly meeting with a contracting client. “Another meeting that could be an email” kind of meeting. Nothing unusual until I noticed I wanted to fire up my LinkedIn account to make it until the end. I wanted a feed to scroll, like an addict.
Those moments made me realize scrolling was my default response to boredom.
Lesson #2: When procrastination comes, start with an easy task and sustain for 5 minutes. That’s enough to keep things moving forward.
Lesson #3: Find a boring activity instead of scrolling on social media. I’m doodling on the back of old receipts.
Social media looks like any other addiction
Even with an intention, books, and doodling, my monkey brain often popped up trying to trick me back to social media:
“What if my account got suspended for lack of engagement?”
“Did my posts generate visits to my book landing pages?”
To quiet the monkey brain, I learned to distance from it and refute my thoughts with rational ones:
“You received a notification of your scheduled posts going live. The system is working.”
“Let your content system run. You don’t need to refresh stats every 5 minutes. Let the Internet do its magic.”
Lesson #4: Social media tricks (whistles, notifications, bells) work. We need a lot of effort and intention to fight back.
“Warming up” the algorithm isn’t worth the time
To finish the experiment, earlier today I logged into my social media accounts.
In some platforms, my impressions suffered. Maybe it was just coincidence. In another one, one of the two scheduled long-form posts was a hit.
As usual, my best posts still spiked in views and thoughtful comments.
“Warming up” the algorithm with hacks (engaging before posting, like and reshare your own posts) isn’t worth the time and the addiction it creates.
Lesson #5: Good posts stand out without hacks.
Handling them with care
After my feed-free week, here are some long-term changes I’m adopting, both as a reader and writer:
No email notifications from social media.
Zero feeds before creative work. Timer on socials for conscious use.
Weekly posts scheduled in advance. Have 2 or 3 weekly slots for engagement.
Feed-free mode when working on creative projects or experiments.
I thought I wasn’t an addict. I thought I used social media consciously. I thought I was a dealer who didn’t use their own drug. Stepping away showed me I was just another dopamine junkie. Social media, like every billion-dollar industry, thrives on keeping us hooked.
When you hear the word “book,” what comes to mind?
A cover, back cover, and spine? Sheets of paper bound to flip from left to right? Printing machines?
Books are recent, but their fascinating origins stretch back thousands and thousands of years. That’s precisely what Irene Vallejo tells us in Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World.
Here are 7 lessons I took away from this book:
#1. Kids didn’t learn with easy books.
My dad bought my sister a book with Franklin the turtle every time she won an exam. Like her, we grew up reading books for kids: easy sentences filled with images.
But kids in Ancient Greece didn’t have easy books. They learned with the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer. To make things worse, ancient Greek didn’t have spaces, paragraphs, or punctuation marks…and teachers were ruthless.
#2. Book copyists worked for centuries.
In Athens, getting a book meant sending someone to Alexandria, Egypt to copy it. Sometimes I complain when it takes a month to receive a book.
#3. Titles, binding, and pocket books are recent inventions.
For centuries, we had rolls instead of books.
To read a scroll, you rolled it with your left hand while unrolling it with your right one. When finished, you rolled it back up as a courtesy for the next reader. Instead of titles, librarians categorized books by their opening sentences.
#4. Books were read out loud.
In school, I learned to read sitting in a circle taking turns to read a passage from an easy story. Then, we had to do it in silence.
But in ancient times, reading out loud was the norm. Reading a book was like a small prayer, a soft monologue.
#5. Iliad and Odyssey were best-sellers.
Probably every educated citizen in Ancient Times knew about them. Even kids learned to read with them.
#6. Education included the body as well as the mind.
Apart from reading, men had to work on their bodies as part of their education. A privilege reserved for higher classes and free men. Slaves were meant only for manual labor.
To strengthen their bodies, men trained outdoors or in gymnasiums showing off their bodies…while naked. Next time you see some “bros” posing and taking selfies in front of a mirror after lifting some weights at the gym, remember it used to be worse in ancient times.
#7. Books won’t die.
Books haven’t always looked the same: clay, stone, leather, papyrus, codices, paper… But they have endured the test of time. eBooks, summaries, TikTok, or AI aren’t a real threat for books. We’ve had them for centuries. And we will for more.
In 2023, one day, I suddenly had to rush to the bathroom after eating. I wanted to finish my work so fast that I skipped meals and developed poor eating habits.
After many doctor visits, here’s a compilation of 10 ideas for better digestion and eating habits.
Eat at consistent times.
Eat liquids and solids separately.
Chew every bite at least 10 times.
Remove distractions like phones and news while eating.
#1.Something big is already happening. AI may not be disrupting markets, like most CEOs claim. But it’s definitely changing job descriptions. Saving is one step to prepare.
#2. Someday we will tell our grandkids that dad once wrote code by hand. We’re the last in a generation of coders. Now is the time to mourn our craft (4min).
And in case you missed it, I’ve been writing on my blog about my social media free week (1min). Here are my day 1 (2min) and day 2 (1min) updates. In the meantime, I’ve picked two books and worked on another book project. (This won’t be about coding. More updates soon!)
(Bzzz…Radio voice) This email was brought to you by… Street-Smart Coding, 30 lessons to help you code like a pro. From Googling to clear communication, it covers the lessons you don’t learn in tutorials. It’s now out on Kindle and paperback on Amazon.
