Hey everyone,
Whenever people ask me,
"How did you get into programming?"
I never really know how to answer.
There wasn't one life-changing moment.
There wasn't one huge project.
There wasn't one magical course.
Instead, it was a collection of lots of tiny moments that slowly made me fall in love with coding.
Looking back now...those little moments still make me smile.
It Started With a Scratch Book 🎮
The biggest reason I got into coding was because of my dad.
He used to work as a software developer before moving into a managerial role, and one day he introduced my brother and me to programming through something surprisingly simple — a Scratch tutorial book.
The book had around ten little games that we had to recreate.
At first, I was simply dragging colorful blocks around the screen.
But slowly...I started understanding the logic behind them.
Seeing a game come alive because of something I built felt magical.
Even better? I could immediately play the game afterwards 😄
I don't think I cared much about programming back then. I just thought,
"This is really fun."
The Python Problem I'll Never Forget 🐍
After Scratch came Python.
My dad started giving my brother and me small programming exercises to solve.
One challenge has stayed with me ever since.
We had to build a simple restaurant program where my dad acted as the customer, and our code became the waiter taking his order.
Everything was going well... until we reached one condition.
The program needed two things to be true before it could continue.
My brother and I kept trying different solutions. Nothing worked.
Then I stopped thinking like a robot for a moment.
"Wait... what if I simply say this AND this has to be true?"
I searched how Python represented an AND condition, changed one line, ran the program...
...and it worked.
Looking back now, it was probably a tiny programming problem.
But I still remember how proud I felt.
It's funny how the smallest victories are sometimes the ones we remember the longest.
One Summer Changed Everything ☀️
The moment coding became more than just little games happened during one summer break in 7th grade.
I enrolled in the Zero to Mastery Complete Web Developer course by Andrei Neagoie.
Every morning after breakfast, my dad would drop me at his second office. I would spend hours there learning before heading home around lunchtime.
Looking back... that summer completely changed how I looked at programming.
The course opened my eyes to an entirely different world.
Not just HTML and CSS. Not just JavaScript.
But React. REST APIs. Backend development. Deployment.
Suddenly, websites weren't magic anymore.
I was slowly learning how they were built.
And that fascinated me.
A Small Confidence Boost 🌟
One thing I'll always remember from that summer was visiting my dad's office.
One of his colleagues used to introduce me to the freshers who had just joined the company.
Honestly... I used to feel a little embarrassed 😅
But somewhere deep down, it also made me feel proud.
For the first time, I quietly thought,
"Yeah... maybe this is what I want to do one day."
That digital world of building things and solving problems suddenly felt like somewhere I belonged.
Every Tiny Project Meant Something 🛠️
From there, I just kept building.
Some of my earliest projects were:
- 🎮 Stone Paper Scissors
- 🔤 Palindrome Checker
- 📝 Shopping List
Looking back today, they're incredibly simple.
But whenever I scroll through those old projects, I don't think,
"Wow... that's bad."
Instead, I smile and think,
"That's where it all started."
Every tiny project taught me something. Every bug taught me patience. Every finished project gave me the confidence to start another one.
Eventually those little projects became:
- ✨ Quote Generator
- 💪 Gym Scheduler
- 🏐 Volleyball Tournament Website
- 🌍 Open Source Contributions
It's honestly funny to think that I went from dragging colourful Scratch blocks around
➡️➡️➡️
to deploying applications that real people actually use.
Or from figuring out one simple AND condition
➡️➡️➡️
to contributing to open-source projects with thousands of lines of code.
Looking Back... ❤️
A few things stand out more than anything else.
🚀 Consistency Matters
One thing I genuinely regret is taking almost an entire year away from coding during 8th grade.
No projects. No courses. No experimenting. Nothing.
Not because I stopped liking programming.
I just became inconsistent.
Looking back, I don't regret not building something huge.
I regret not building something small.
💡 Small Projects Are Never a Waste of Time
I literally built a Stone Paper Scissors game.
And honestly... I'm still proud of it 😄
It wasn't about how impressive the project was.
It was about showing up, learning something new, and finishing what I started.
Those tiny projects quietly prepared me for the bigger ones.
🤖 Curiosity Will Always Beat Convenience
I've always been very pro-AI, and that hasn't changed.
The things Claude Code and other AI tools can do today still feel like magic sometimes 😅
But one thing has stayed exactly the same.
My curiosity.
Even when AI gives me the answer, I still find myself asking,
"Wait... how did it do that?"
Or, "Could I build this myself?"
For me, AI has never replaced learning.
If anything... it's made me even more curious.
Final Thoughts ❤️
Looking back...
none of these moments felt particularly important while they were happening.
A Scratch game.
A Python exercise.
A summer course.
A tiny portfolio.
A Stone Paper Scissors game.
Individually, they all seemed ordinary.
But somehow those little moments are exactly what made me love programming.
And honestly - I wouldn't trade any of them for anything.
See you guys in the next one. 🚀
Top comments (2)
This one was honestly fun to write. Some of these memories I hadn't thought about in a while 😄
Hope you guys enjoyed reading about my journey.❤️