There is a lot of advice thrown out there to people who are just starting out to learn how to program. The learning never stops. It’s been a crazy journey over the past two years, from spending countless hours alone trying to learn things by myself. To enrolling into a Bloc course and then finally the intensive 12 weeks of Dev Bootcamp. Now I am a contract web developer who is tackling challenging problems, learning new things on a daily basis and loving every moment of it.

So what is my piece of advice? Build things. There is no secret formula, book or programming language. The only way to improve is to build things. I don’t care what programming language you use (Ruby is awesome), just build things. Half baked things, things people would use or things you want to use. Basically anything!

I’ll be honest with you. I wasted the starting months while learning. I kept devouring new books, latest challenges of codecademy and anything that kept me away from uncertainty. This just filled my ego. I wasn’t progressing as a programmer, I was just getting comfortable with syntax. I was lying to myself that I was improving. The bottom line is, the only way to improve is to build things.

I have a lot of time but I don’t know what to build.

Stop feeding yourself excuses. You use a lot of websites on a daily basis. How about build a clone of it? Try exercising different muscles. Want some ideas?

• Martyr2’S Mega Project Ideas List
• 180 websites in 180 days

Your task over here is not to make money with these things, I am not saying you can’t, but your main focus should be to get as much experience under your belt as possible.

I don’t have enough time.

Lies. If this really matters to you, you will find time. Skip an episode of your favorite TV show, don’t go out for that movie or cancel a night out. Carve out a set time couple of times a week, more if you can. And just code. Think of it as an appointment that you can’t miss, nothing else matters during those hours.

You are not doing this to get a job or to make your github look impressive. It can, but your main objective here is to get better at coding. The idea here is to level up, tackle areas you are unfamiliar about and embrace the uncertainty. It’s very easy to keep building things that don’t stretch your skill level.

Go code. Don’t think about writing code, just code.

I turned around to Stephane and said, “I think the world is ready for my thoughts.” He said, you mean you are ready to expose your thoughts to the world. I thought about that for a second, and realized how true that is. I have been wanting to start a blog since a year now, but I kept delaying it because I was afraid about what people might think. In reality nobody cares about you, all they think about is themselves. Enough of that bullshit. I have finally reached a state of mind, where I don’t mind putting myself out there.

Tell me about Yourself.

The interview question I dread. Recently graduated from high school in Dubai. Wandered for a few months and initially decided to not follow the traditional path of college. Completed Dev Bootcamp, a 9 week intensive course on web development, on April 19th 2013. Currently an aspiring web developer. I love learning and exploring new things. This is a brief overview of my journey over the past couple of years, read the whole account here.

My writings are going to be about the things I learn and my ramblings. Mainly about my journey as a software developer.