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.
Gabriel García Márquez shocked me in the prologue of Strange Pilgrims.
I’m binge-reading some of his most popular books. Love in Times of Cholera was the last one.
I’m not ready yet for One Hundred Years of Solitude.
But in the meantime, I picked up Strange Pilgrims, a collection of short stories that take place outside his hometown.
Here’s an excerpt of the prologue:
“When I started Chronicles of a Deaht Foretold, in 1979, I confirmed the fact that in the pauses between books I tended to lose the habit of writing, and it was becoming more and more difficult for me to begin again. That is why, between October 1980 and March 1984, I set myself the task of writing a weekly opinion column for newspapers in various countries, as a kind of discipline for keeping my arm in shape.”
In the Spanish edition, the last line reads more like “for keeping my arm warm.”
Maybe a reference to baseball or other sports.
Wow! A Nobel-winning writer lost his touches if he stopped writing.
He practiced with opinion columns: something shorter, less complex than a full-length novel.
Every post is a repetition, a push-up, a practice session,
Even if it’s just a few sentences that nobody seems to be reading. Better a small session than a broken habit.
If an athlete goes to the gym, does drills, or runs every day.
If a Nobel-winning writer gets out of shape in the time between books.
Every day you don’t write “colds your arms.”
Write every single day.
I challenged myself to write 30 notes and 4 posts in Substack, but it cost me my sanity.
I chose Substack after being shadow-banned from Medium and, I have to admit it, I wanted some attention and book sales. But…
In past weeks, I’ve gone throught an episode of stress and anxiety. My head has been rushing with ruminating thoughts and time traveling, and trying to hit a quota of likes and comments to get subscribers and followers only added more oxygen and fuel to the fire. I was so anxious I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. I needed to work hard to get back to my steady lifestyle.
I quit engaging at all, and scheduled all my notes and posts instead.
Some random numbers
In spite of my lack of engagement in the last two weeks, here are some random numbers from my experiment:
8 followers and 7 subscribers.
45 notes and 4 posts written.
6 likes on my top-2 performing notes.
5 views, 1 like, and 1 comment on my top performing post.
One. Comment. On. A. Post. OMG! That already felt like going viral.
One small daily choice that saved me from burnout:
Do something for my body, mind, and spirit every day.
True health means the three in balance.
Work on each one every day. No excuses!
That’s a simple recipe for a happy life.
Yes, I tweaked a post I already shared here on my blog. Don’t call the Internet police, please.
Some lessons
Subscriber and follower count meant almost nothing, but here are the most important bits from my experiment:
#1. No matter the application, doomscrolling is always doomscrolling… and everything shown in a screen is most likely designed to steal your attention.
#2. You don’t have to grow or make money. Don’t listen to gurus selling you growth tactics. It’s OK to grow at your own pace… or to quit.
#3. Good ideas stand on their own, without hacks.
#4. If it drains you, cut it out. Your sanity is more important than a Monopoly money next to your name on a platform.
#5. Time in front of a screen is time away from yourself and from real interaction.
I’m keeping my Substack account to distribute my long-form posts to a wider audience, but strong, mindful participation rules: Only for 1 hour a week to schedule my content. Nothing more.
Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week:
#1. Bugs and incidents happen when there’s a flaw in the software development process. To make sure they don’t occur again, don’t share the details (5min).
#2. “Not all hobbies have to be productive,” a friend told me last week. We were talking about how AI has changed expectations at the workplace. F*ck it, and do it anyway (5min): the old way, the hard way, the slow way.
(Bzzz…Radio voice) This email was brought to you by… Street-Smart Coding Manifesto. A case against syntax obsession. Because real impact comes from skills outside your IDE.
