Motivation to code for indie builders

Quotes and thoughts on building software

• “The only product baby that will ever truly be yours is your own bootstrapped startup”
• “Try to actually remove features nobody uses”
• “Don’t fall into CSS hell !!!!!!!”
• “Watch user sessions. Study it like a hawk. You’ll learn things.”
• Build something “basic but effective”
• There’s a difference between solving a problem the brute force way and solving a problem WELL. (elegance)
• “Due to the amazing quantity of libraries, tools and all kinds of things that make your development easier, a lot of programmers start building applications without having the deep understanding of how something works under the hood. While programming can be complicated, many developers are attracted to using higher level tools and abstracting away the “bad parts” of the language…..you will still be able to build amazing applications doing that.”
• “When in doubt, look at each and every character 1 by 1”.
• Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” ~Harold Abelson
• “Every computer program can be described in terms of its inputs and outputs. Every programming language has methods in its API for accepting inputs and providing outputs.” – Isaac Lyman
• “Coding is like playing with lego bricks” – Isaac lyman
• “Learn python because there are more APIs so it makes building something easier”
• HTML, CSS, SQL, and the command line are things you can pickup pretty easily in a few days. Little to no complex thinking is required. PHP, Javascript or Python, however, are more difficult as they require logic and complex thinking.
• 80/20 – try to spend a small amount of time learning 80% of the basics of a language to do the things you need to do for your app. Chat GPT can help.
• Be part of a scene: Find a group of people that is also learning programming languages and building stuff..
• “Once you’ve learned one language (like JavaScript), you’re already 75% of the way to learning similar languages, like Python and Ruby.”
  • Memorizing syntax is kind of important, but what you really want to retain are patterns that can be used across languages.
  • The syntax is initially very difficult. Learning what all those weird symbols like ; { [ ( and random words go, how they act, etc. Also, learning various definitions and how things are structured… There is a lot of memorization in coding, just like learning to speak a foreign language. Just like learning to speak Spanish, learning to write Javascript programs are best done by applying the knowledge you learn. Its easier to learn to speak Spanish by spending a year in a Spanish Speaking country. Its easier to learn to code by actually going out and building apps. Actually do create programs to learn.
• On Tools. Learning a programming language is like learning how to use a tool. People who don’t know how to use tools are incompetent… If you don’t know how to use vinegar / baking soda and a mop to clean your house, you’ll live in a pig sty of filth.
• Avoid tutorial hell: Consider working on a project, rather than just reading about it. This way, you’ll have more fun, and inevitably pick up things along the way. Find a simple project that you can commit to working on, so that you progress a project while progressing your skills.
• I am not quite a self-taught programmer, for I have benefited greatly from the wisdom of others… guides, blog posts, forum comments, self-paced training. I am only “self-taught” in that I did not go to college to study computer science, and I have not worked formally employed as a software developer.
• Learning to code today is quite painless. There are so many resources and tools that it’s much much less of a slog… all the boring parts are almost removed, what’s left is the fun parts. The joy of getting to interact with the computer in a unique way, the joy of creating programs.
• The hard part is learning the logic, structures, and architecture. The tedious part is remembering the different command names… the language.
• Responsive design was created such that things can fit on the screen, yes, but also, to limit the scrolling to just two directions, up and down. Responsive Web Design allowed scrolling up and down only on mobile devices. Scrolling in 4 (up down left right) is cumbersome and thus less user friendly than in 1 dimension.