9 Years of “Learning to Code” and I Still Couldn’t Build a To-Do App
I’ve been “learning to code” for nine years. Still remember typing my first HTML line at some Netcafe.
Translation: I have like hundreds of GitHub repos full of unfinished tutorials, cloned boilerplates, and folders named "final-v3-actually-final"
Not a single working project.
Last week I’m in a café, rewatching the same JavaScript tutorial for the 23rd time. Next to me? A 16-year-old casually building a Discord bot that streams live sports data.
Me? Hyped because I finally understood closures.
That’s when it hit me: I wasn’t learning to code. I was learning to feel like I was learning to code. Big difference.
Welcome to Tutorial Hell™
- Udemy courses: 47 purchased, 0 completed.
- YouTube tutorials: bookmarked infinity.
- Coding blogs: consumed more than actual code written.
But ask me to build a CRUD app from scratch? Nothing but cricket sounds.
Tutorials are comfy. They make you feel smart while avoiding the scary part: actually building something that breaks.
And when you’re trapped, the week looks like this:
- Monday: “I’ll start a real project.”
- Tuesday: “But first… one React crash course.”
- Wednesday: “Actually, TypeScript first.”
- Thursday: “Wait, algorithms matter, right?”
- Friday: “Ooo new Next.js course!”
- Weekend: Bookmark 15 more tutorials.
Repeat. For years.
The Breakout
Two weeks ago, I rage-deleted every single coding bookmark. Then wrote one dumb idea:
“A webpage that counts down to a movie release.”
Not an app. Not a startup. Just a janky react/tailwind page.
Three hours later, it actually worked. It was ugly—but it was mine.
The Real Lessons
- Debugging is 90% of coding. Tutorials skip the “2 hours fixing a missing semicolon” part.
- Ugly code that runs > perfect code that doesn’t exist.
- You learn by breaking, not by watching.
Speedrun Out of Tutorial Hell
- Day 1: Pick the dumbest project idea.
- Day 2: Write garbage code until it barely works.
- Day 3: Google your way through one big bug.
- Day 4: Add one impossible feature.
- Day 5: Show it to someone (even if it sucks).
Repeat.
Plot Twist
That countdown app → led to an expense tracker → led to a habit tracker.
Three projects in three weeks. That’s more than I built in nine years of “learning.”
Am I a 10x dev? No. My code could make a senior dev cry. But it runs. And that’s the only metric that matters.
The Rule
Every Sunday: delete tutorials, keep projects. Brutal but effective.
Nine years of prep = nothing. Nine days of building = three working apps.
The secret isn’t being smart. It’s being okay with sucking, and building anyway.
I'm embarrassed to share this with the world. I still suck at coding, but I'mma keep going anyway.