I started building side projects to practice coding. What I didn’t expect? They ended up teaching me more about people, patience, and psychology than about programming.
Here are three lessons I never saw coming:
Ideas are cheap. Execution is gold.
Every dev has “million-dollar ideas”. But when you actually sit to code, you realize execution is where 99% of people quit. That’s where you stand out.
Users don’t care about your code.
You could have the cleanest backend and the most optimized queries. If the button color is confusing, your user is gone. It’s humbling to realize UI sometimes matters more than algorithms.
Shipping kills fear.
Every time I hit publish on a project, I feel like an imposter. What if it’s buggy? What if no one likes it? But once it’s out there, I realize—the world is too busy to judge me, but the right people do notice.
The funny thing? None of these lessons came from books or courses. They came from actually building, failing, and shipping.
If you’re learning to code and haven’t built your own project yet, you’re missing the most important half of the game. Stop waiting for the “perfect time”. Your first imperfect project will teach you more than any perfect tutorial.
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