02 Jul 2025 #misc
Writing isn’t hard. It’s doing it when nobody is reading.
I started reviving my LinkedIn account last year. At first, I only got one or two reactions from friends and ex-coworkers.
To keep myself showing up day after day, I started a “wins” folder. That’s an idea I got from “Steal Like an Artist.” Every time something good happens, like an encouraging comment or extra likes, I’d screenshot it for motivation.
This last week, I added another screenshot to it. It was a comment on my reposted Medium post about writing a book for our future grandkids:
“I never thought of writing as a gift for future generations, but now I want to document everything. This really shifted something in me!”
That comment made my day. I managed to change a stranger’s view on something with my words. And that was more rewarding than any of the other comments I had received recently.
Collect and celebrate your small victories, too. They make your day and keep you going.
01 Jul 2025 #misc
It’s clear when you’re taking a relationship seriously.
You spend time with your loved one and stop looking for somebody else.
But what about a creative project? What does taking writing, painting, or coding seriously mean?
I started writing in 2018, but I didn’t treat it seriously until 2024.
For me, taking my writing seriously meant:
- Showing up consistently
- Studying other writers’ work
- Putting my writing in front of others
- Challenging myself out of my comfort zone
- Writing about other subjects apart from coding
- Hanging around other writers online
- Buying my first writing course
- Listening to feedback
With those actions, writing stopped being something I did only in my spare time and when inspiration struck to become part of my everyday rhythm. They help me build the confidence to call myself a “writer.”
Taking a creative project seriously means committing it by showing up and working on improving your skills.
Tom Critchlow, with his post Taking Blogging Seriously, got me thinking about all this.
30 Jun 2025 #misc
Search YouTube for journaling or note-taking, and you’ll almost certainly land on Field Notes.
Field Notes makes pocket-sized notebooks. Yes, the old-style pen-and-paper kind of notebooks.
I have to confess that I don’t use them (yet?). For my 10 bad idea lists, I use a cheap, ring-bound notepad that fits in my pocket. Still, their story resonated a lot with me.
While reading how the two creators started Field Notes, I found out they had a simple framework for starting creative projects:
- It should make money
- It should be something you’re proud of
- It should teach you something
For them, Field Notes checked the three boxes. And those three rules work for a design studio and for any creative project: a side hustle, newsletter, or book. OK, we can negotiate the first one a little.
If you’re starting a creative project, use your fingerprints and don’t forget about this law.
29 Jun 2025 #misc
You know that saying, “Don’t give advice unless asked?”
Well, some people ignored it and gave it anyway. Here are the best pieces of advice I’ve received:
From high school:
“Read, because if you don’t read, you won’t learn anything.”
That was from my philosophy teacher in high school. He said it all the time. I don’t remember much from his class, but for some reason that line has stayed with me.
If I still remember that years later, he did his job.
From my first job:
“Imagine you make half of your salary, save the other half.”
A senior co-worker at my first coding job gave me that totally unexpectedly. That lesson stuck with me so much, I couldn’t resist adding it to my an email course I created years later.
From my last full-time job:
“Diversify your career.”
That was from one of my not-mentors. I reached out to him when I wasn’t sure about where to take my software engineering career. We had many 1-on-1s. That’s what I remember the most. It was good advice. I didn’t follow it. I burned out.
28 Jun 2025 #coding
Technology makes us lazy.
That’s not an opinion but a fact. We can’t do mental math, find addresses, or memorize phone numbers anymore. That’s the problem with relying too much on a piece of tech. Smartphones, I’m looking at you.
The same thing happens in coding, with AI and vibe-coding.
I’m guilty too. I’ve been experimenting with AI to offload my plate of boring tasks. And when I can’t think of an answer immediately, I’m tempted to go straight to the genie in the bottle to grant me a coding wish.
And I’m not alone in this. Recently, I found this question on Reddit,
“It’s been a while since I coded on C#/Unity so I’m very rusty on the concepts and relying too much on ChatGPT makes me feel like I haven’t learned anything and can’t write code on my own without doing basic mistakes… How do I learn everything back? Isn’t there a way to refresh my mind? A really good video on YouTube or something? I want to stop using AI and code on my own.”
For the original poster and anyone else who wants to break free from AI, here are 10 ideas to try:
0. Ban AI.
Think of AI as calculators in math classes. You can’t use them until you know the procedure you want to automate by hand.
Like any mom disciplining her kid, “No more AI until you do your homework…”
1. Study your main language syntax.
Get to know the syntax of your language of choice: write variables, functions, loops, classes…
For that, grab a textbook or watch a “all you need to know about X in 4 hours” YouTube videos. But don’t just passively consume them, recreate the examples and projects from them. By typing them out. No Control C + Control V.
2. Know your standard library.
Get familiar with your standard library:
- Write a variable and see what your editor or IDE suggests.
- What methods can you use with that type?
- Look at their signature and docstring.
3. Study SQL.
No matter how powerful ORMs are, we can’t escape from SQL.
We’ve had SQL since the early 70s and chances are we’re still using SQL another decade or two.
Learn to create tables, write queries aggregating results, and learn about JOINs. Download a light version of the StackOverflow database and play with it, if you want realistic examples.
4. Build a toy project from scratch.
OK, I’m not talking about reinventing the wheel to write your own text editor or something.
I’m talking about building a recipe catalog, a todo app, or a CLI wrapper around a free API. And build it from scratch: right click, then create new folder in your editor or IDE, and so on. It will teach you a lot.
5. Find your own answers.
When you get an error message (you will if you follow #4), resist the urge of going back to AI or simply asking a friend.
Try to figure out errors and exceptions on your own. Start by googling the error message. There’s a thing called Google that finds web pages with answers to our questions. Sure, it’s old-school but it builds real muscle. Remember, AI is still banned. (See #0)
6. Learn the most common data structures.
80% of the time, you’ll only need lists and dictionaries. But there are more data structures of course.
Learn to use them and how to implement them. You won’t have to implement them from scratch at your daily job, but it will stretch your problem-solving muscles.
7. Study a textbook on Math for Computer Science.
Unless you’re working on niche domains, you won’t need advanced Math.
But grab a book on Discrete Math (or Math for Computer Science) and study a chapter or two. Again, to sharpen your thinking.
8. Practice rubber-duck debugging.
You will get stuck a lot. That’s a feature of being a coder, not a bug.
When that happens,
- Grab pen and paper
- Go through your program line by line
- Talk out loud
9. Read the official documentation.
Pull out the Mozilla’s Web Docs, Microsoft Learn, and any other official source for your language of choice, and not only read it, but come up with your own examples and think of how you can use what you’re reading in your own code.
AI is a blessing for learning. Ask any veteran who learned from reference manuals, language specifications, and magazines, they’ll tell you. Just don’t let AI think for you. OK, let’s slightly lift the AI ban, don’t use it to generate code. Use it as your copilot, not as your captain.
If you’re new at coding, stop chasing shiny objects and follow these 10 tips every new coder should know to succeed.