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.
“Labor is work that we get paid for. It’s work we wouldn’t do for free. And for most people on social media, it’s unpaid labor on behalf of the platforms.”
His words made me rethink how to use LinkedIn, before quitting social media once and for all.
Use it strategically to showcase your work and redirect people to a place you control.
Thanks to James’ new ways of storytelling, I learned the Internet, like a big city, has odd places for art too:
Google Docs.
They’re a corner of the internet away from social media, search engines, and AI.
They form a gray web: The Doc Web.
A term coined by Elan Ullendorff, originally in a Google Doc.
Join the Doc Web
And to practice my 10-idea list habit, here are 10 ways to adopt the Doc Web as a writer, solopreneur, or creative:
#1. A book:
Publish it by sharing a read-only public url.
If anyone wants to download it, they can create a copy.
#2. A landing page:
Use headers, bold, italics, underline and include a call to action on the last page.
#3. A micro-blogging platform:
Tweet by adding a timestamped paragraph at the top.
Share it with “commenters” permission and you’ll have replies.
#4. A poll application:
Want to collect questions for an AMA or Q&A session?
Share a document and ask people to leave one question per paragraph.
They can upvote a question by increasing its font size.
#5. A survey or questionnaire:
Share a document with your multiple-answer questions.
People answer with a “+”.
#6. A membership area:
Use your members’ email to give restricted access to a document with your exclusive content.
#7. A guestbook (a la Facebook wall):
In your blog, link to a public Document for anyone to sign it.
#8. A magazine or episodic publication:
Use a single document as the latest edition.
To release a new version:
Make a copy of the last edition
Overwrite the original content, and
Link to the previous edition
#9. A bookmarking service (a la Delicious):
Whenever you find an interesting link, add it to a public document.
Keep it organized with an index on the first page.
Share it with friends.
#10. A forum:
Start each question on a new page.
Include the creator’s display name and timestamp.
Answer by adding your name and a timestamp before your reply.
Use comments to start threads.
To run your next membership or community, the Doc Web is all you need.
And to start a blog, forget about hosting and domains.
You already know what to use instead.
A Doc. Why not!
I jumped to try ChatGPT when it was announced.
But since it was still in beta, it was always too busy.
Then in 2024, I tried Copilot for coding.
First, it felt like, “hey this is cool.”
Weeks later, it was more like “this is dangerous.”
That’s my AI coding journey in two lines.
Do you use AI or are you completely against using it?
For coding, I use it for the boring and repetitive parts.
I don’t use AI inside my coding editor, but in a browser tab.
For writing, I want AI and its tentacles away from my writing…except for proofreading.
Do you have any preference among different models, for example Claude vs ChatGPT? If yes, how do you choose?
I never wanted to create an account for ChatGPT, especially after the news that your ChatGPT chats were somehow indexed. I use Copilot on Edge.
What aspect of AI models do you like and what do you not like?
They feel faster than Googling.
But they sound helpful and confident, even generating nonsense.
That’s the real danger: blindly trusting whatever they throw up.
We need real skills first before leveraging AI.
How do you feel about AI generated images? Does it annoy you if someone uses them in a blog post?
The first time I tried AI was to play with image generators.
Since I’m not naturally talented at drawing, I use them here and there.
When I syndicate my coding content on dev.to, I generate funny cartoons with cats as covers.
It’s annoying when covers all look the same.
Same colors, layout, and fonts. Eeewww!
Internet is flooded with AI slop now, full of generated text, images, audio and videos. How do you filter it from authentic human creation? Do you have a strategy?
My phone time has reduced my content consumption.
So I’m more conscious of what I read and watch.
These days I’m more into blog aggregators and bookmarking social media profiles instead of scrolling feeds.
Are you hopeful for a better future with A.I. or a dystopian one?
It’s hard to be hopeful when CEOs use AI as the goat for layoffs.
But overall as humanity, we’ve always progressed.
With AI, it isn’t the exception.
Yesterday marked the 7-month anniversary of Street-Smart Coding, my first oficial book. Wow!
It taught me a lot about writing and marketing. “Do good work and people will come” isn’t 100% true. It should be “do good work and tell people about it.” That applies for a book, a SaaS, or a job promotion.
#2. Deitel’s C/C++ was the first technical book I studied. In college, I devoured one about Vim and RegEx, learning by typing out examples. But these days, it seems nobody opens technical books anymore (5min)
#3. At the last Google I/O, they pushed AI snippets harder. The search engine feels dead. If you don’t want AI in your search results, here are 6 alternative search engines (7min)
#4. If you’ve ever had bad interview experiences, you’re not alone. Here’s someone’s worst job interview (4min). Quick tip: Keep your answers work-related.
(Bzzz…Radio voice) This email was brought to you by… My Gumroad store where you can find free and premium books and courses to level up your coding skills and grow your software engineering career.
