30 Jan 2026 #mondaylinks
Hey there.
This week marks three months since I launched Street-Smart Coding. It started in a notebook with a 10-idea list. Now it’s a book. Getting the first paperback copies made me feel like a New York Times bestselling author. Pinch me, please.
After that quick update, here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week:
#1. For months, we’ve been hearing that AI will replace coders. But a more realistic prediction is to say that we won’t be writing code by hand in 5 years (10min). Truth is, coding was never the hard part.
#2. If you’re looking for a tech job in 2026, instead of applying and sending out CVs everywhere, make a target bet (4min). Without knowing it, that’s the strategy I followed to land my last contracting gig.
#3. With LLMs and agents, building in-house replacements for paid tools sounds tempting as a way to save some money). But writing code is just the tip of the iceberg (5min).
#4. These days, American coworkers complain about the weather, and I keep converting between Fahrenheit and Celsius. Here’s a quick mental heuristic to do it (1min).
And in case you missed it, I wrote on my blog about a new rule for using AI without losing my skills (2min) and how to be an expert at failing (and survive to tell the story) (5min).
(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.
Until next Friday, keep coding smart
Cesar
29 Jan 2026 #misc
#1. Always have something to write on. This week, I caught up with an ex-coworker. He shared a valuable story that deserved its own post. Thank goodness I grabbed a napkin from the cafe where we met. That’s where I outlined the post.
#2. The notebook cult. Finding out about zines to reduce my phone time took me to a YouTube rabbit hole. Turns out there’s a whole cult. People with notebooks for everything. Notebooks for quotes, journaling, habit trackers, commonplace notebooks, pocket notebooks. I’m not joining the cult, I’m fine with my idea pad.
#3. Start your next creative project backwards. Before starting, imagine it’s finished, then write the sales page and announcements. That forces you to clarify your goal and message. That’s what I’m doing for my next book.
#4. A simple method to overcome burnout. A pen pal shared his burnout was appearing again. When he asked how I avoid burnout, I shared my mantra: care for your body, mind, and spirit daily. That’s one of the ideas that has changed my life.
#5. 1, 2, 3, and get up. I can’t remember what podcast I learned this from. As soon as you wake up, count up to 3 and get up. Those moments after waking up are when you become a time traveler, reliving the past and sketching possible futures.
28 Jan 2026 #books
Three months ago, I launched my first book, Street-Smart Coding. A persistence test.
It wasn’t my first, but the first I was confident enough to call a book. It challenged my persistence. I even wrote chapters in a hospital while supporting a loved one. Chapter 17 is one of those. Sometimes I avoid rereading those chapters.
Some lessons, realizations, and hard-truths
Writing a book taught me many lessons:
#1. Interior design is not that hard. Reedsy does the heavy lifting. Or you can find your way with Word and a lot of Googling.
#2. Instead of a massive launch, think of a series. That’s the best promotion strategy for your first book.
#3. Set a deadline. A task can take as much time as we give it. Writing a book isn’t the exception. It took me about 4 months to finish the first draft. Here are more lessons nobody told me about writing a book.
#4. Once your book is out, the game starts in your head. That’s the fear of finding typos or getting bad reviews. That’s refreshing your sales dashboard and comparing your book to others. Here are more realizations. Just focus on what you can control: work on the next one.
#5. There’s always something you could have done better. Once it’s out, it’s out. Your job was to write it, your audience’s job is to read it. Again, work on the next one.
I’m doing this differently
By no means, I’m an expert book writer. I only have two under my belt. But here’s what I’d do differently.
#1. Start backwards. Start with a promise, cover, sales page, and outline. That forces you to clarify your book promise and message.
#2. Come up with a one-liner. That’s to summarize the core ideas and to make promotion easier.
#3. Pre-sell it earlier. “Do good work and people will come” is a lie.
I once read an ebook called, Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding by Rob Walling. It was about building SaaS startups, but the idea works for books too.
With a clear promise, cover, and sales page (following #1), start promoting from day one.
#4. And I’d order my author copies from Amazon earlier.
Some numbers
I offer Street-Smart Coding as an eBook via Gumroad, and in Kindle and paperback formats in Amazon.
Here’s a breakdown of copies sold:
- eBook version: 51 sales. +2 in Spanish edition
- Kindle version: 1 sale.
- Paperback version: 1 sale.
- “Door-to-door” sales: 8 copies. (7 Spanish, 1 English).
For me, even one sale beyond friends and acquaintances meant success. That’s enough motivation to keep writing.
27 Jan 2026 #misc
“I’m not an expert at anything. Only at failing.”
A friend and ex-coworker told me that when we caught up over coffee after many years. Well, I was giving him a paperback copy of my latest book. Shameless plug.
I don’t know why, but our conversation shifted after that line. I had to ask him why he said that.
You have to start from scratch
At college, everybody told him he had a talent for coding. But he was fired from his first job for his performance.
After losing his job, he broke his wedding engagement. He disappointed his parents. He thought he had nothing else to do. Failure wasn’t a stranger. It had become his shadow.
He started as a teacher. He thought he had found “his thing.” But he got fired from that too. Another disappointment.
Then, to try something new, he went back to college. He had to find something. He had to find his calling.
One day on campus, ready to quit, he sat at a table with his head in his hands. The pose of a disappointed, frustrated man.
That’s when he heard something unexpected.
“Which plant grows faster? A tomato plant or a mango tree?”
“A tomato plant,” other students who had joined the table said.
“Which plant gives fruit for longer?” the mysterious voice said. He kept his head down all that time.
“The mango tree,” the students said.
“Exactly! You have to be mango trees. The tomato plant dies after harvest. A mango tree gives mangoes for a lifetime.”
After many failures, that was his wake-up call. At first, he thought it was a wise student. But when my friend raised his head to find out where that voice came from, he found a teacher.
“It was God,” he told me.
That day, he decided to get up and work for himself. If his parents or family were disappointed because he didn’t meet their expectations, that was their problem. Not his.
Lesson 1: Live up to your own expectations.
Lesson 2: You have to start over and over. That’s a skill no class teaches you, only failure and life do.
Lesson 3: Be a mango tree.
That was a moment to start from scratch again, after failing at his first job, his first relationship, and first everything.
Being fired from his first job was a sign he wasn’t as smart as he had thought.
Maybe it was impostor syndrome. Trust me, he’s smart.
But after months, he was interviewing at the same place where I was working.
“I know I’m not the smartest, but I’m going to be the most charismatic,” that’s what he thought before the first interview.
That strategy worked. He got the job. But failing at so many things, he was ready to get fired after the first month.
Later, at my workplace, he carried a notebook and wrote down everything. When I asked him about it, he told me, “I had to take away something, at least some notes.”
“After many failures, I learned to read who was really someone who knew and who was just a charlatan. I learned from everyone and I wrote it down.”
He was at the office before clock-in and still there after clock-out. “I had to make an extra effort. It took me 5 hours to finish what others did in 1.” Effort was his secret weapon.
Lesson 4: Take a notebook with you everywhere. (Thank goodness I had a napkin to write down the lessons my friend taught me as soon as our conversation was over.)
Lesson 5: Persistence beats intelligence. If you aren’t the smartest, you have to be the one who puts the most effort.
“A coding problem? Nah! That’s not a problem. I’m used to failure.” Sure, a compilation error was nothing after many disappointments and setbacks.
“That’s why I say I’m an expert at failing.” Wow! We shook hands and went our separate ways. That day, I met a true expert and a wise man—and realized failing isn’t the end.
26 Jan 2026 #coding
When code breaks, you can’t simply say, “AI did that.”
You’re responsible for the code you ship. That’s been true from the days of copy-pasting from forums, blog posts, StackOverflow, and now from AI.
AI is fast, but over-reliance makes you lose your mental models and context—just one problem with AI.
The new rule
To protect my skills, I’ve set one rule: Don’t let AI touch your code directly. It might feel unproductive. But it keeps my hands on the wheel.
To test this rule, I recently tried finishing a task using as much AI as possible. While going through the AI-generated code, I came up with another rule:
If I write the code, AI reviews it. And if AI generates the code, I review it.
That way, I use AI while keeping my code writing and reading sharp. Either way, AI is just like a copilot in the cockpit, an extra layer of safety and productivity.
AI is changing the act of coding. Some brag about coding without typing a single line of code, thanks to Claude Code. Whether what AI generates is clean code or garbage, its CEOs aren’t accountable for it. We are.
If you want to sharpen the skills AI can’t replace, check out Street-Smart Coding. It’s the guide I wish I’d had on my journey to becoming a senior coder.