You're going to waste years of your life learning to code if nobody tells you the truth.
Not because you're not smart enough. Not because programming is impossibly hard. But because you're going to spend most of your time learning things that don't matter, building skills nobody needs, and following advice that sounds good but leads nowhere.
I've watched hundreds of beginners make the same mistakes. Hell, I made most of them myself. And the pattern is always the same: they work incredibly hard, they're dedicated, they're motivated—and yet somehow, after six months or a year, they still can't build anything real. They know a little bit of everything and not enough of anything. They've completed twelve courses and can't explain what a callback does. They've watched a thousand YouTube tutorials and freeze when they see a blank editor.
The problem isn't effort. It's focus.
And this is where the Pareto Principle—the 80/20 rule—becomes the most important concept you'll ever understand about learning programming.
What the Hell is the Pareto Principle?
The Pareto Principle, named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, observes that roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. Pareto noticed that 80% of Italy's land was owned by 20% of the population. But the pattern shows up everywhere. In business, 80% of sales often come from 20% of customers. In your wardrobe, you probably wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time. In your work, 80% of your results probably come from 20% of your efforts.
It's not always exactly 80/20—sometimes it's 90/10, sometimes 70/30. The precise numbers don't matter. What matters is the fundamental imbalance: a small number of inputs create the vast majority of outputs.
And in programming, this imbalance is extreme.
There's a small core of concepts, skills, and practices that will make you genuinely useful as a developer. Everything else—and I mean everything else—is either advanced specialization you don't need yet, outdated advice from people who learned differently, or outright bullshit designed to sell courses.
The tragedy is that most beginners spend 80% of their time on the 20% of stuff that barely matters, and almost no time on the 20% that would actually transform them into developers.
Let me show you what I mean.
The Trap Most Beginners Fall Into
Picture a typical beginner's learning journey. They start with a course on Udemy or freeCodeCamp or wherever. The course is structured, comprehensive, complete. It covers variables, then data types, then operators, then control flow, then functions, then objects, then arrays, then more advanced array methods, then this concept, then that concept, building layer by layer.
And the beginner diligently works through every single lesson. They take notes. They follow along. They complete the exercises. They feel like they're making progress because the progress bar moves forward and they're learning new syntax every day.
Then the course ends, and they realize they can't build anything.
So they take another course. This one promises to be more project-based, more practical, more real-world. And it is—kind of. They build a to-do app. They build a weather app. They build a calculator. They follow the instructor's code line by line, pausing the video when they fall behind, copying the styling, copying the logic, copying everything.
And when the course ends, they still can't build anything on their own.
So they start watching YouTube tutorials. They learn about design patterns they don't understand. They learn about advanced CSS techniques they'll never use. They learn about framework features they have no context for. They're collecting information like trading cards, hoarding knowledge without integration, mistaking exposure for mastery.
Months pass. Maybe a year. They've consumed hundreds of hours of content. They can talk about closures and prototypes and event loops and async/await. They know what React hooks are. They've heard of Docker.
But put them in front of a blank file and ask them to build something—anything—from scratch, and they panic.
Why?
Because they've been learning the 80% that doesn't matter instead of the 20% that does.
They've been learning syntax instead of problem-solving. They've been watching instead of building. They've been following instead of thinking. They've been optimizing for feeling productive instead of becoming capable.
And nobody told them the truth: most of what you're learning doesn't matter yet. Some of it will never matter. And the stuff that actually matters—the core 20%—you're barely touching.
What is the Real 20%?
So what is the 20% that creates 80% of your results as a programmer?
It's not what you think.
It's not knowing all the array methods in JavaScript. It's not understanding the complete CSS box model. It's not memorizing the syntax for list comprehensions in Python. It's not even knowing a framework.
The real 20% is this:
The ability to break problems into smaller problems, and solve them one at a time using the basic building blocks of programming.
That's it. That's the entire game.
Everything else—frameworks, libraries, design patterns, best practices, architectural decisions—all of that is either built on top of this foundation or is completely irrelevant until you have this foundation.
Let me break down what this actually means in practice.
The Core Skills That Matter
1. Variables and Assignment
You need to understand that variables are containers for values. You need to be comfortable creating them, updating them, and using them to store information. Not the theoretical computer science explanation of memory addresses—just the practical reality of "I need to remember this value, so I put it in a variable."
2. Data Types and Structures
You need to know the basic types: numbers, strings, booleans. You need to know the basic structures: arrays (or lists) and objects (or dictionaries, or hash maps—whatever your language calls them). Not every method, not every edge case, just the fundamental concept of "I can store multiple things in an ordered list" and "I can store related information as key-value pairs."
3. Conditionals
You need to be able to make decisions in code. If this, then do that. Otherwise, do something else. You need this to be so automatic that you don't think about the syntax—you just think about the logic.
4. Loops
You need to be able to do something multiple times. Iterate over a list. Repeat until a condition is met. Again, the syntax should fade into the background. You're thinking about the repetition, not the for loop.
5. Functions
You need to understand that functions are reusable blocks of code that can take inputs and return outputs. You need to be comfortable writing them, calling them, and thinking about your program as a collection of functions that work together.
6. Reading Error Messages
This one is massive and almost nobody teaches it explicitly. You need to be able to read an error message, understand what it's telling you (even if the language is cryptic), and use that information to fix the problem. You need to stop being afraid of red text in the console.
7. Debugging Mindset
When something doesn't work, you need a process for figuring out why. Print statements. Debugger. Logging. Commenting out code. Isolating the problem. You need to be comfortable with "my code is broken and I'm going to systematically figure out where."
8. Reading Documentation
You need to be able to look up how something works. Read the official docs. Understand the examples. Figure out how to apply it to your situation. This is a skill that takes practice—documentation is often written for people who already understand the thing.
9. Searching for Solutions
When you're stuck, you need to know how to Google effectively. How to phrase the question. How to filter StackOverflow answers. How to recognize when a solution is outdated. How to adapt someone else's code to your problem.
10. Building in Small Steps
You need to resist the urge to write a hundred lines of code and then run it. You need to write three lines, run it, make sure it works, then write three more lines. You need to build incrementally, testing as you go, so you always know where you are.
That's the 20%.
Notice what's not on this list: frameworks, libraries, git workflows, deployment, testing frameworks, design patterns, databases, APIs, authentication, algorithms, data structures, complexity analysis, or any of the thousand other things that programming courses love to cram in.
Those things matter. Some of them matter a lot. But they don't matter yet.
They're the 80% that you learn after you've mastered the 20%. Or more accurately, they're the 80% that you learn naturally, as needed, once you're actually building things, because you'll encounter them in context and they'll make sense because you have the foundation.
Why This Changes Everything
When you focus on the 20%, something magical happens: you become capable of building things.
Not impressive things. Not things that would get you a job at Google. But actual, working programs that solve actual problems.
You can build a script that renames files on your computer. You can build a program that scrapes a website and saves the data to a CSV. You can build a simple game where you guess a number. You can build a web page that responds to button clicks. You can build a tool that automates something annoying in your life.
And once you can build things—even simple things—everything changes.
Because now you're not learning in a vacuum. You're learning in context. When you encounter a concept or a tool or a technique, you understand why it exists. You can see how it would make your current project better. You can experiment with it, integrate it, and actually learn it instead of just memorizing it.
A beginner who has mastered the 20% and built ten simple projects will destroy a beginner who has taken five courses and built nothing.
The first beginner has mental models. They have intuition. They've encountered problems and solved them. They've been confused and figured it out. They've written bad code and refactored it. They've debugged their own mistakes. They've learned to think like a programmer.
The second beginner has information. Information without context, without integration, without application. They know what things are called, but they don't know when to use them or why.
And here's the brutal truth: the second beginner is going to take another course because they feel like they don't know enough yet. They're going to keep consuming, keep hoarding, keep preparing to start. They're trapped in tutorial hell, and they don't even realize it.
The first beginner is going to build their eleventh project. And their twelfth. And eventually, without even noticing it, they're going to be a developer.
How This Applies to Different Languages
The beautiful thing about the 20% is that it's mostly the same across languages.
If you're learning JavaScript, the 20% is variables, functions, loops, conditionals, arrays, objects, DOM manipulation (since you're probably building for the web), and the ability to debug when things break.
If you're learning Python, the 20% is variables, functions, loops, conditionals, lists, dictionaries, maybe some basic file I/O, and the ability to debug when things break.
If you're learning Java, it's the same core concepts, just with different syntax and the added complexity of static typing and object-oriented structure (which, honestly, makes Java a harder first language, but that's a different conversation).
The syntax changes. The paradigms shift slightly. But the fundamental skills—the ability to think through a problem and express the solution in code—remain constant.
This is why experienced developers can pick up new languages relatively quickly. They're not learning to program again. They're just learning new syntax for concepts they already understand deeply.
And this is why beginners who try to learn three languages at once are wasting their time. You don't need to learn three languages. You need to learn to program once, deeply, and then the languages come easy.
Pick one language. Master the 20%. Build until you're comfortable. Then, if you need another language, you'll learn it in a few weeks instead of a few months because you're not learning programming—you're just learning syntax.
Front-End, Back-End, and the Myth of Specialization
Beginners love to ask: "Should I learn front-end or back-end? Should I become a full-stack developer? What should I specialize in?"
And the question reveals the misunderstanding.
You don't specialize yet. You barely know how to program yet. Asking what to specialize in is like a person who just learned to read asking whether they should focus on Russian literature or American literature. First, learn to read. Then read widely. Then, naturally, you'll develop preferences and dive deeper into what interests you.
But let's talk about how the 80/20 rule applies to front-end, back-end, and full-stack development anyway, because it's useful to understand what you're getting into.
Front-End Development
The 20% of front-end is:
- HTML structure (divs, headings, paragraphs, links, images, forms)
- CSS basics (colors, sizes, positioning, flexbox or grid for layout)
- JavaScript fundamentals (the core 20% we already talked about)
- DOM manipulation (selecting elements, changing their content/style, responding to events)
The 80% is:
- All the advanced CSS (animations, transitions, preprocessors, methodologies)
- All the frameworks (React, Vue, Angular, Svelte)
- All the tooling (Webpack, Babel, ESLint, Prettier)
- All the optimization techniques (lazy loading, code splitting, performance tuning)
- All the advanced patterns (state management, component architecture, hooks patterns)
See the pattern? The 20% lets you build interactive web pages. The 80% makes you faster, more organized, and more hireable, but it's built on top of the 20%.
Most front-end bootcamps and courses get this backwards. They rush you through HTML/CSS/JS basics and then spend 80% of the time teaching React. So you end up knowing React without knowing JavaScript. You can use hooks, but you can't write a loop. You can render components, but you don't understand the DOM.
And then you're stuck, because you can't learn advanced concepts when you don't understand the fundamentals they're built on.
Back-End Development
The 20% of back-end is:
- Server basics (requests, responses, routes, status codes)
- Database fundamentals (creating tables, inserting data, querying data, basic relationships)
- Authentication concepts (sessions, tokens, what "logged in" means)
- API design (endpoints, JSON, RESTful thinking)
The 80% is:
- Advanced database optimization (indexes, query planning, transactions)
- Microservices architecture
- Message queues and event-driven systems
- Caching strategies
- DevOps and deployment pipelines
- Security hardening
- All the frameworks and ORMs
Again, the 20% lets you build a working back-end that serves data and handles user accounts. The 80% makes it scalable, secure, maintainable, and production-ready.
A beginner who understands the 20% can build a back-end for a small project. They can create a database, write endpoints, and make it all work together. It won't handle a million users, but it'll work.
A beginner who tries to learn everything—Kubernetes, Redis, microservices, GraphQL, all of it—before they understand the basics will drown in complexity. They'll be trying to optimize a system they haven't built yet. They'll be solving problems they don't have.
Full-Stack Development
Full-stack just means you do both. And the 80/20 rule applies the same way: focus on the core of both front-end and back-end, ignore the advanced stuff until you need it.
A full-stack developer who has mastered the 20% of both can build complete applications. Small applications, simple applications, but complete. They can build a to-do app with a database. They can build a blog with user authentication. They can build a dashboard that displays data from an API.
And that's powerful. That's the foundation. Everything else is optimization, scaling, and professional polish.
Common Myths That Waste Your Time
Let's talk about the lies you've been told, because they're costing you months or years of progress.
Myth #1: "You need to understand everything before you can build anything."
This is the myth that traps people in tutorial hell forever. They think there's some threshold of knowledge where suddenly they'll be "ready" to build real projects. There isn't. You start building on day one. You build broken, ugly, terrible things, and you learn by fixing them.
The professionals don't know everything. They just know how to figure things out. They Google constantly. They read docs constantly. They're comfortable being confused and working through it.
You don't need to understand recursion before you can build a website. You don't need to understand Big O notation before you can write a useful script. You don't need to understand closures before you can make an interactive app.
You need to understand variables, loops, and functions. Then you build. And you learn the rest as you need it.
Myth #2: "You should learn multiple languages to become a better programmer."
This is advice from experienced developers that makes no sense for beginners.
Yes, learning multiple languages expands your perspective and makes you a better programmer. Eventually. After you already know how to program.
But if you're still struggling with the fundamentals, learning multiple languages simultaneously is just confusing. You'll mix up syntax. You'll never go deep enough in any one language to actually become comfortable. You'll be constantly starting over instead of building momentum.
Pick one language. Master it. Build a dozen projects in it. Then, if you want, learn another. You'll be shocked how fast the second one comes.
Myth #3: "You need to memorize syntax."
Nobody memorizes syntax. Nobody.
Experienced developers Google syntax constantly. They forget how to do things they haven't done in a month. They look up documentation for libraries they use every day.
The difference is they know what to Google and how to read the documentation. They have the mental model—they know what needs to happen, they just don't remember the exact way to write it.
Beginners try to memorize array methods and object notation and all these little details, and it's wasted effort. You don't memorize the phone book—you learn how to look things up.
Myth #4: "You should follow best practices from the start."
Best practices exist for a reason, and eventually you should follow them. But not yet.
When you're learning, your goal is to make the thing work. Not to make it work elegantly. Not to make it work efficiently. Not to make it work according to industry standards.
Just make it work.
Write messy code. Write repetitive code. Write code that would make a senior developer cry. Then make it work. Then, once it works, you can clean it up. You can refactor. You can apply patterns.
But trying to write perfect code while you're still learning is like trying to write a perfect essay on your first draft. It's paralyzing. It slows you down. And it prevents you from finishing anything.
Myth #5: "You need to learn algorithms and data structures before you can get a job."
This one is partially true, which makes it especially dangerous.
Yes, many tech companies ask algorithm questions in interviews. Yes, understanding data structures makes you a better programmer. But no, you don't need to study them before you can build things or even get your first job.
Most programming jobs—especially entry-level jobs—don't require you to implement a binary search tree. They require you to use libraries and frameworks to solve business problems. They require you to write maintainable code, communicate with your team, and figure out what the user actually needs.
Study algorithms when you're preparing for interviews or when you encounter a performance problem you need to solve. Don't study them instead of building projects.
Myth #6: "Courses and tutorials are how you learn programming."
Courses and tutorials are how you're introduced to programming concepts. They're not how you learn programming.
You learn programming by writing code. By struggling. By getting stuck and figuring it out. By building something that doesn't work, then making it work, then making it better.
Courses are useful for getting the initial exposure. "Oh, this is what a function is. Oh, this is how loops work." But then you need to close the course and write your own code. Immediately. Don't wait until the course is done. Don't wait until you feel ready.
Take a concept, close the video, and try to use it in your own project. That's when the learning happens.
How Real Developers Actually Learn
Let me tell you how I learned to program. Not because my way is the right way, but because it illustrates the pattern that almost every successful self-taught developer follows.
I didn't take courses. I had a problem I wanted to solve.
I wanted to build a website for a project I was working on. I didn't know HTML, I didn't know CSS, I didn't know JavaScript. I just knew I wanted the website to exist.
So I Googled "how to make a website." I found some basic HTML tutorial. I read enough to understand that HTML is tags that define structure. I wrote some tags. I opened the file in a browser. It looked like garbage, but it was something.
Then I wanted it to look better. So I Googled "how to style HTML." I found out about CSS. I learned that you can change colors and sizes and positions. I tried stuff. Most of it didn't work the way I expected. I Googled why. I tried again.
Then I wanted it to be interactive. I wanted a button that did something when you clicked it. So I Googled "HTML button click." I found out about JavaScript. I copied some example code. It didn't work. I didn't understand the error message. I Googled the error message. I fixed it. It worked.
And then I wanted to do more. I wanted a form that saved data. I wanted images that changed. I wanted animations. And each time, I Googled, I tried, I failed, I fixed it, and I learned.
I never took a comprehensive JavaScript course. I never learned all the array methods in order. I never studied the fundamentals systematically.
I just built. And when I needed something, I learned it. And the learning stuck because it was in context, because I was solving a real problem I cared about, because I immediately applied it.
This is how real developers learn. Not just self-taught developers—all developers.
You work on a project. You encounter a problem. You Google the problem. You try solutions. You read documentation. You ask for help. You figure it out. And now you know that thing.
Then you encounter the next problem, and you repeat the process.
The difference between a junior developer and a senior developer isn't that the senior developer knows more. It's that the senior developer has encountered more problems and solved them. They have more patterns in their head. They recognize situations faster. They know where to look for answers.
But they're still Googling. They're still reading docs. They're still encountering things they don't know and figuring them out.
The Problem-Solving Mindset
This is the thing that courses don't teach and can't teach: how to think like a programmer.
Programming is not about writing code. Writing code is just the medium. Programming is about breaking complex problems into simple steps, and then expressing those steps in a language the computer understands.
When you see a problem, your first instinct should not be "what code do I write?" Your first instinct should be "what are the steps to solve this?"
Let's say you want to build a simple guessing game. The computer picks a random number between 1 and 100, and the user tries to guess it. After each guess, the computer says "too high" or "too low" until the user gets it right.
A beginner looks at this and thinks: "I don't know how to build a guessing game."
A programmer looks at this and thinks: "What are the steps?"
- The computer needs to pick a random number.
- The user needs to be able to input a guess.
- The computer needs to compare the guess to the random number.
- The computer needs to tell the user if the guess is too high, too low, or correct.
- If it's not correct, the user guesses again.
- If it is correct, the game ends.
Now you have steps. And each step is simple.
Step 1: How do I generate a random number? You don't know, so you Google "generate random number in JavaScript" (or Python, or whatever). You find Math.random(). You figure out how to use it. Done.
Step 2: How do I get user input? You Google it. You find prompt() in JavaScript or input() in Python. Done.
Step 3: How do I compare two numbers? You know this. if (guess > number) or whatever. Done.
Step 4: How do I output a message? You know this. console.log() or print(). Done.
Step 5: How do I repeat something? You know this. A loop. Maybe a while loop that keeps going until the guess is correct.
Step 6: How do I stop the loop? You know this. The loop condition.
And just like that, you've designed the entire program. You didn't write any code yet. You just thought through the logic.
Now writing the code is easy. You translate each step into syntax. And yes, you'll mess up the syntax. You'll forget a semicolon or misspell a variable or get the loop condition backwards. But those are small, fixable problems. The hard part—figuring out what to do—is done.
This is the 20%. This is the skill that matters.
Not knowing the syntax for a while loop. Knowing that you need a loop, and knowing how to figure out the syntax when you need it.
Not knowing every array method. Knowing that arrays exist, knowing what problems they solve, and knowing how to look up the method you need.
Not memorizing the DOM API. Knowing that you can select elements and change them, and knowing how to find the specific method in the documentation.
Learning Syntax vs. Learning Problem-Solving
Syntax is the easy part. It's mechanical. It's memorizable. It's Googleable.
Problem-solving is the hard part. It's not mechanical. You can't memorize it. You can't Google it directly.
But this is where beginners spend their time backwards.
They stress about syntax. They make flashcards for array methods. They rewatch videos trying to memorize how to write a for loop.
And they avoid problem-solving. They avoid the hard thinking. They follow tutorials that tell them exactly what to type, so they never have to figure anything out themselves.
And then they wonder why they can't code without a tutorial.
Here's the truth: you should be bad at syntax for a while. You should be constantly looking things up. You should be uncertain about how to write things.
That's fine. That's normal. That's expected.
What you should not be uncertain about is what you're trying to do.
If I give you a problem—"write a function that takes an array of numbers and returns only the even ones"—you might not remember the exact syntax for filtering an array. That's okay. But you should know that you need to loop through the array, check each number, and collect the ones that meet the condition.
If you know that, you can figure out the syntax. If you don't know that, no amount of syntax knowledge will help you.
This is why I recommend beginners spend most of their time on small, self-directed projects rather than tutorials.
Build a program that converts temperatures from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Build a program that generates a random password. Build a program that counts how many times each word appears in a text. Build a simple calculator. Build a number guessing game. Build a to-do list.
These projects force you to think. You have to figure out the steps. You have to break down the problem. You have to make decisions about how to structure the code.
And yes, you'll struggle. You'll get stuck. You'll spend an hour trying to figure out why something doesn't work.
Good. That's where the learning happens.
That hour of struggle teaches you more than ten hours of following a tutorial. Because during that hour, you're thinking. You're debugging. You're building mental models. You're actually learning to program.
Using Failure as a Learning Tool
Let's talk about bugs, because bugs are where beginners give up and where experienced developers thrive.
When a beginner's code doesn't work, they panic. They assume they did something completely wrong. They feel stupid. They wonder if they're cut out for programming.
When an experienced developer's code doesn't work, they think: "Interesting. What did I assume that wasn't true?"
This mindset shift is everything.
Bugs are not failures. Bugs are information. They're the computer telling you that your mental model doesn't match reality, and now you get to update your mental model.
Every bug you encounter and fix makes you better. Not because you memorized the solution, but because you deepened your understanding of how the system works.
When you get an error message, don't just Google the error and copy-paste the solution. Read the error message. Try to understand what it's telling you. Even if the language is cryptic, there's information there.
"Undefined is not a function" means you're trying to call something that isn't a function. Maybe you misspelled the function name. Maybe the thing you think is a function is actually something else. Maybe you forgot to import it.
"Cannot read property 'x' of undefined" means you're trying to access a property on something that's undefined. Which means that thing doesn't exist or hasn't been set yet. So why? Where is it supposed to come from? Why isn't it there?
The error message is a clue. Follow the clue.
And when you don't get an error message—when your code runs but doesn't do what you expected—that's even more interesting. That means your logic is wrong. Your mental model of what the code does doesn't match what it actually does.
So you debug. You add print statements (or console.logs, or whatever your language uses). You print out the values of variables at different points. You figure out where the actual behavior diverges from the expected behavior.
"I thought this variable would be 5 at this point, but it's actually 4. Why? Oh, because I forgot to add 1 there. Or because I'm incrementing it in the wrong place. Or because I misunderstood what this function returns."
Every time you do this, you learn something. You learn how the language actually works, as opposed to how you thought it worked.
This is the hidden curriculum. This is what you can't get from a course. You can only get it from building things, breaking them, and fixing them.
The Problem with Documentation
Documentation is essential, but it's also completely useless until you're ready for it.
Beginners try to read documentation and get overwhelmed. It's too technical, too complete, too dry. They don't know what they're looking for. They don't have the context to understand the examples.
So they give up and go back to tutorials.
But here's the secret: documentation isn't meant to be read linearly. It's not a book. It's a reference.
You read documentation when you have a specific question. "How do I sort an array?" "What parameters does this function take?" "What does this method return?"
You skim until you find the relevant section. You read that section. You look at the examples. You try to adapt the example to your situation.
And if it doesn't make sense, you Google for a tutorial or a blog post that explains it in simpler terms. Then you come back to the documentation to get the specific details.
Documentation is the authoritative source, but it's not the learning source. Especially when you're a beginner.
The one exception: error messages and stack traces. Those you should read carefully, because they're telling you exactly what's wrong and exactly where. Learning to read error messages is maybe the single most valuable skill you can develop early on.
Why Projects Beat Tutorials
I've said this a few times now, but let me be explicit about why projects are the 20% and tutorials are the 80%.
When you follow a tutorial, you're in guided mode. The instructor tells you what to type and when. You don't have to think about what comes next because they tell you. You don't have to figure out how to structure the code because they've already structured it. You don't have to debug because they've already debugged it.
You're learning what code looks like. You're learning what concepts exist. But you're not learning how to write code.
When you work on a project—your own project, that you came up with, that you're building from scratch—you're in unguided mode. Every decision is yours. Every step is yours. Every mistake is yours.
You have to think about what comes next. You have to structure the code. You have to debug.
And it's hard. It's uncomfortable. You get stuck. You don't know what to do next.
But this is exactly where the learning happens.
When you're stuck, you're being forced to think. You're building problem-solving skills. You're learning how to learn. You're developing the independence that separates developers who can build things from developers who can only follow instructions.
Plus, projects give you context. When you encounter a concept in a tutorial, it's abstract. "Here's what a callback is." Okay, but why do I care?
When you encounter the same concept while building a project, it's concrete. "I need this thing to happen after this other thing finishes, but I don't know how to wait for it. Oh, that's what callbacks are for."
Now the concept makes sense. Now it's useful. Now you'll remember it.
This is why I recommend a learning approach that's maybe 20% tutorials and 80% projects. Use tutorials to get the initial exposure to concepts. Then immediately go build something that uses those concepts. Don't wait. Don't keep watching. Build.
The Power of Building Badly
One of the most liberating realizations in programming is this: your first version can be terrible.
Actually, it should be terrible.
Beginners try to write good code immediately. They worry about best practices, about efficiency, about elegance. They want their code to be clean and professional.
And this perfectionism kills their momentum.
They spend an hour deciding how to structure a function. They refactor before they've even finished the first draft. They start over because they don't like how it's turning out.
Stop.
Write bad code. Write messy, repetitive, inefficient code. Just make it work first.
There's a principle in writing called "write drunk, edit sober." The idea is that when you're drafting, you should turn off your internal critic and just get words on the page. You can clean it up later. But if you try to write a perfect first draft, you'll never finish.
Programming is the same.
When you're building something, your goal is to make it work. Not to make it work perfectly. Not to make it work elegantly. Just make it work.
Copy and paste code if you need to. Repeat yourself. Hard-code values. Use terrible variable names. Comment out code instead of deleting it. Do whatever it takes to get to a working version.
Once it works, then you can refactor. You can clean it up. You can apply patterns. You can optimize.
But you have to have the working version first.
And here's the thing: sometimes you won't even bother refactoring. Sometimes "works" is good enough. And that's okay too.
This is a hard lesson for beginners because we're taught that there's a "right way" to code. And there is, sort of. But the right way doesn't matter if you never finish.
I've seen so many beginners abandon projects because they got halfway through, realized their code was messy, and decided to start over "the right way." And then they start over, get halfway through again, realize it's still not perfect, and start over again. They're trapped in an endless loop of rewriting, never finishing anything.
Meanwhile, the developer who wrote messy code and shipped it has a finished project. They can show it to people. They can use it. They can learn from it. And most importantly, they can start the next project.
You learn more from finishing ten messy projects than from starting one perfect project ten times.
The Myth of "Just One More Course"
There's a particular kind of hell that beginners fall into, and it looks like this:
They finish a course. They don't feel confident enough to build something on their own. So they take another course, thinking this one will finally make everything click. They finish that course. They still don't feel ready. So they take another one. And another. And another.
They're always learning, always consuming, always preparing. But never building. Never shipping. Never actually doing the thing.
This is tutorial hell, and it's insidious because it feels like progress. You're learning new things every day. You're checking off lessons. You're completing certificates. You're adding skills to your LinkedIn.
But you're not becoming a developer.
Here's the hard truth: no course will ever make you feel ready. No amount of preparation will eliminate the discomfort of building something on your own.
That discomfort is not a sign that you need more courses. It's a sign that you need to start building.
The feeling of "I don't know enough yet" never goes away. I've been programming for years, and I still feel it on every project. The difference is that experienced developers have learned to build anyway. They've learned that you figure it out as you go.
If you've completed even one introductory course—if you know what variables are, what functions are, what loops are—you know enough to start building. Not enough to build anything. But enough to build something small. And that small thing will teach you what you need for the next small thing.
The jump from courses to building is terrifying. You go from having all the answers provided to having to figure everything out yourself. But it's a necessary jump. And the longer you wait, the harder it gets, because you keep reinforcing the habit of passive learning instead of active building.
So here's what you do: right now, today, pick a small project. Something so simple it feels almost silly. A program that converts miles to kilometers. A web page with a button that changes color when you click it. A script that counts the words in a text file.
Build it. Not perfectly. Just functionally.
And when you finish—when you have something that works, no matter how ugly or simple—you'll feel something you've never felt from completing a tutorial: you'll feel capable.
That feeling is the 20%. Chase it.
Real-World Application: What Matters for Getting a Job
Let's talk about jobs, because that's what most people are actually optimizing for when they learn to program.
What do employers actually care about?
They care about whether you can solve problems. They care about whether you can learn new things quickly. They care about whether you can work with existing code. They care about whether you can communicate and collaborate.
What do they not care about? How many courses you've taken. How many certificates you have. How many frameworks you've memorized.
Your portfolio matters. Your GitHub matters. Your ability to talk about your projects and the decisions you made matters.
And all of that comes from building, not from courses.
When you're job-hunting as a beginner, the 20% that gets you 80% of the results is:
1. Having 2-3 solid projects you can talk about intelligently.
Not twenty projects. Not one project. Two or three that are substantial enough to show you can build something real, but focused enough that you understand them deeply.
These should be projects you built yourself, from scratch, that solve a problem or demonstrate a skill. Not tutorial projects where you followed along. Your own projects.
And when I say "talk about intelligently," I mean you should be able to explain:
- Why you built it
- What challenges you encountered
- How you solved those challenges
- What you'd do differently if you built it again
- What technologies you used and why
This demonstrates problem-solving ability, learning ability, and self-awareness. That's what employers want.
2. A clean, working version of those projects that someone can actually use or look at.
If it's a web app, deploy it. If it's a script, record a demo. If it's a game, make it playable.
Don't leave it half-finished with a README that says "work in progress." Don't have broken links. Don't have obvious bugs that you just never fixed.
Polish the 20% that people will actually see. The code can be messy—most interviewers won't even look at the code. But the user experience should work.
3. The ability to solve basic problems in a technical interview.
This means you can:
- Take a problem description and break it into steps
- Write code that implements those steps
- Debug when it doesn't work
- Explain your thinking out loud
You don't need to know dynamic programming or graph algorithms (unless you're applying to the big tech companies that ask those questions, which is a whole different conversation). You just need to demonstrate clear thinking and basic coding ability.
4. Communication skills.
This one is underrated. If you can explain technical concepts clearly, if you can talk about your work without being defensive, if you can admit what you don't know while showing confidence in what you do know—you're ahead of most candidates.
Practice talking about your projects. Practice explaining technical decisions. Practice saying "I don't know, but here's how I would figure it out."
The 80% that barely matters for getting your first job:
- Algorithms and data structures (unless you're applying to specific companies)
- Deep knowledge of frameworks (you'll learn the company's stack on the job)
- Best practices and design patterns (you'll learn these on the job too)
- Advanced topics like system design, microservices, DevOps (way too early)
- Certificates and credentials (nobody cares)
- Knowing every language and technology (focus on one stack)
Now, once you have the job, some of that 80% becomes important. You'll need to learn the team's practices, pick up new tools, and go deeper into specific areas. But for getting the first job, it's mostly irrelevant.
The paradox is that most beginners optimize for the 80%. They collect certificates, they learn five frameworks, they study algorithms they'll never use, they stress about knowing everything.
And then they have no projects to show, no ability to talk about their work, and no confidence in a technical interview.
Focus on the 20%. Build things. Get good at explaining them. Be able to code under pressure. That's the game.
The Long-Term Compounding Effect
Here's why the 80/20 approach matters even more than I've made it sound: it compounds.
When you focus on the 20%—on problem-solving, on building, on learning how to learn—you develop skills that make everything else easier.
The beginner who spent six months taking courses has six months of information in their head. Disconnected facts, memorized syntax, vague understanding of concepts.
The beginner who spent six months building projects has six months of integrated knowledge. Mental models, debugging experience, pattern recognition, confidence.
Now both beginners start learning a new framework—let's say React.
The first beginner is lost. React assumes you understand JavaScript deeply. It assumes you're comfortable with functions, with state, with asynchronous operations. The first beginner knows these things exist, but they've never really internalized them. So they're learning React and still learning JavaScript at the same time. Everything is hard.
The second beginner picks up React quickly. Not because they're smarter, but because they have the foundation. They understand JavaScript. They've built interfaces before. They've managed state before, even if it was messy. So React is just a new way of doing things they already understand. It's syntax, not concepts.
This pattern repeats forever.
The developer with a strong foundation learns new tools quickly because they understand the underlying principles. They can read documentation efficiently because they know what to look for. They can debug unfamiliar code because they've debugged their own code a thousand times.
The developer without a foundation is always struggling. Every new thing is hard. They're always taking courses, always feeling behind, always wondering why they're not getting it.
The 20% compounds. The 80% doesn't.
This is why I'm so insistent on building projects and focusing on fundamentals. Not because I'm gatekeeping or because I think my way is the only way. But because I've seen this play out hundreds of times.
The shortcut—skipping the fundamentals, jumping straight to frameworks, learning from tutorials—seems faster. But it's not. It's slower, because you're building on sand. Eventually, you have to go back and learn the foundations anyway, and now it's harder because you have to unlearn bad habits and fill in gaps while also trying to move forward.
The long way—focusing on the fundamentals, building slowly, struggling through problems—seems slower. But it's faster, because you're building on rock. Every new thing you learn sits on top of solid understanding, so it clicks into place easily.
This is the 80/20 rule at the meta level: spending 20% of your time building a strong foundation creates 80% of your long-term progress.
Recognizing When You're Ready to Move Forward
One question beginners ask a lot: "How do I know when I'm ready to learn X?"
And the answer is simpler than you think: when you need it.
You're ready to learn a framework when you've built enough vanilla JavaScript projects that you're tired of doing the same things over and over, and you want a tool that makes it easier.
You're ready to learn a database when you've built projects that need to store data permanently, and you're frustrated with the limitations of storing everything in memory or in files.
You're ready to learn Git when you've screwed up your code so many times that you wish you could go back to previous versions.
You're ready to learn testing when your projects get complex enough that you're spending too much time manually checking if things still work.
You learn things when they solve problems you have. Not before.
This is the natural order of learning. You don't study databases before you need to store data. You don't study authentication before you need users to log in. You don't study optimization before you have performance problems.
You encounter the problem, then you learn the tool.
And this is why the 80/20 approach works so well. You're always learning the 20% that matters right now. The rest—the 80% you don't need yet—you're ignoring. And then, later, when you do need it, it becomes part of the new 20%, and you learn it.
The mistake is learning things "just in case." Just-in-case learning is the 80% that wastes your time.
Learn what you need when you need it. That's the 20%.
Different Contexts, Same Principle
The 80/20 rule applies differently depending on your goals, but the underlying principle is the same: focus on what matters, ignore what doesn't.
If you're learning to program for fun, for hobby projects, for personal automation—the 20% is whatever skills let you build the things you want to build. You don't need to learn frameworks. You don't need to learn best practices. You don't need to care about scalability or maintainability. You just need the core skills that let you solve your problems.
If you're learning to program to get a job, the 20% is what I outlined earlier: a few solid projects, the ability to solve problems in interviews, and communication skills. Everything else—the courses, the certificates, the advanced topics—is the 80% that looks good on paper but doesn't actually get you hired.
If you're learning to program because you're in a CS degree, the 20% is... honestly, harder to define, because academia has its own priorities. But even there, the students who do best are the ones who build side projects outside of class. The ones who take the concepts from lectures and immediately apply them. The ones who don't just study the theory but also write the code.
If you're already a developer and you're learning something new—a new language, a new framework, a new paradigm—the 20% is figuring out how the new thing maps to what you already know, and then building something small in it immediately. Reading the entire documentation front-to-back is the 80%. Building a project and looking up what you need as you need it is the 20%.
The context changes, but the pattern doesn't: focus on the small set of high-leverage activities that create real capability, and ignore the vast sea of low-leverage activities that feel like learning but aren't.
What This Looks Like in Practice: A Case Study
Let me give you a concrete example of how this plays out.
Let's say you want to learn web development. You've heard you need to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Node, databases, Git, deployment, and about fifty other things.
The 80/20 approach looks like this:
Week 1-2: Basic HTML and CSS
You learn just enough HTML to create a page with headings, paragraphs, images, and links. You learn just enough CSS to change colors, sizes, and positions. You don't learn every HTML tag or every CSS property. You learn the core 20%.
Then you build something: a simple personal website. A fan page for something you like. A recipe page. Anything.
It'll look bad. That's fine. You made a web page. That's the goal.
Week 3-4: Basic JavaScript
You learn variables, functions, if statements, loops, and arrays. You learn how to select HTML elements and change them. You learn how to respond to button clicks.
Then you build something: a simple interactive widget. A counter that goes up and down when you click buttons. A color picker. A simple game like rock-paper-scissors.
You'll get stuck. You'll spend an hour figuring out why your loop doesn't work. You'll Google a lot. Good. That's learning.
Week 5-8: Projects
Now you build real projects. Not tutorial projects. Your projects.
Maybe you build a to-do app. Maybe you build a calculator. Maybe you build a quiz game. Maybe you build a simple dashboard that displays data.
Each project should stretch you slightly beyond what you're comfortable with. You should have to figure out new things. You should get stuck and have to debug.
This is where the real learning happens. You're building problem-solving skills. You're building debugging skills. You're building confidence.
Week 9-12: More advanced JS and projects
Now you start encountering situations where you need more advanced concepts. You need to fetch data from an API. You need to handle asynchronous operations. You need to organize your code better because it's getting messy.
So you learn these things—not because a course told you to, but because you need them for your projects.
You learn about promises and async/await. You learn about modules and how to organize code. You learn about APIs and how to use them.
And you keep building. Every new concept gets immediately applied to a project.
Month 4-6: Depth and polish
Now you've built 5-10 projects. Some are terrible. Some are decent. You go back to your earlier projects and refactor them. You apply what you've learned. You make them better.
You pick one or two projects and really polish them. Deploy them. Make them look good. Make them work smoothly.
You're now a beginner web developer who can build things. You have projects to show. You can talk about your work. You can solve problems.
Notice what you didn't do:
- You didn't take a comprehensive course on HTML/CSS
- You didn't learn every JavaScript method
- You didn't learn a framework yet
- You didn't learn Git (though you probably should at some point)
- You didn't learn Node or databases
- You didn't learn testing or deployment or any advanced topics
And yet, you can build functional web pages and applications. You have a portfolio. You could probably get an entry-level job or a freelance gig.
All that other stuff? You can learn it later, when you need it, and it'll be easier because you have the foundation.
That's the 80/20 approach in practice.
Compare this to the typical bootcamp approach: four weeks of HTML/CSS/JS basics, eight weeks of React, two weeks of Node, two weeks of databases, two weeks of final projects. You learn a ton of tools, but you barely have time to internalize any of them. You know what React hooks are, but you don't really understand JavaScript. You can follow the instructor's code, but you can't build something on your own.
The 80/20 approach takes the same amount of time (or less), but you spend it on the skills that matter. And you end up more capable, more confident, and more employable.
The Trap of Advanced Topics Too Early
Let's talk about a specific trap that catches a lot of beginners: learning advanced topics before they're ready.
Beginners love learning about advanced stuff. Design patterns, architecture, algorithms, optimization, clean code principles—it all sounds impressive and important.
And it is. Eventually.
But when you're still struggling with the basics, learning advanced topics is worse than useless. It's actively harmful.
Here's why:
First, you don't have the context to understand them. Design patterns are solutions to problems you haven't encountered yet. They don't make sense in the abstract. They only make sense when you've felt the pain of the problem they solve.
If you've never built anything complex enough to have messy, tangled code, you won't understand why the Observer pattern is useful. You'll memorize the definition, but you won't internalize it.
Second, they give you a false sense of knowledge. You can talk about SOLID principles and dependency injection and all these advanced concepts, but if you can't build a working to-do app, what's the point?
It's like learning chess strategies before you know how the pieces move. Sure, you can talk about controlling the center and sacrificing material for position, but you can't actually play the game.
Third, they make you overcomplicate things. You learn about all these patterns and best practices, and then you try to apply them to simple projects that don't need them. Your code becomes harder to write and harder to understand because you're using tools designed for large, complex systems on small, simple problems.
The beginner who just learned about the Factory pattern will try to use it in a 50-line script. The beginner who just learned about microservices will try to architect their first project as five separate services. It's overengineering, and it kills momentum.
The right time to learn advanced topics is when you've encountered the problems they solve. When your code is so messy that you need patterns to organize it. When your project is so slow that you need optimization techniques. When your architecture is so complex that you need principles to guide your decisions.
Until then, keep it simple. Write straightforward code. Solve the problem in front of you. Build the thing.
The advanced stuff is the 80%. The fundamentals are the 20%.
The Emotional Side of Learning
There's an emotional component to the 80/20 approach that I haven't talked about much, but it matters.
Learning programming is hard. Not intellectually hard—programming is actually not that complicated once you get past the initial confusion. But emotionally hard.
You spend hours stuck on problems. You feel stupid. You wonder if you're cut out for this. You see other people who seem to get it easily, and you compare yourself unfavorably. You doubt yourself constantly.
This is normal. Every programmer has felt this. The impostor syndrome is real, and it's especially intense when you're learning.
And here's where the 80/20 approach helps emotionally, not just practically:
When you focus on building projects, you get wins. Small wins, but wins. You build something that works. You solve a problem you couldn't solve yesterday. You see progress in a concrete way.
This builds confidence. Not fake, affirmation-based confidence, but real, earned confidence that comes from capability.
When you focus on courses and tutorials, you don't get wins. You get information. Information doesn't feel like progress. You finish a course and you don't feel more capable, you just feel like you know more stuff.
And without that feeling of capability, it's hard to stay motivated. You keep consuming content, hoping that eventually you'll feel ready, but you never do.
This is why so many people give up. Not because programming is too hard, but because they never give themselves the chance to feel capable.
So if you're struggling right now, if you're doubting yourself, if you're wondering whether you should just quit—try this:
Stop consuming. Stop taking courses. Stop watching tutorials.
Pick the simplest project you can imagine. Something so simple it feels embarrassing. And build it. Just make it work.
You'll struggle. That's okay. Struggle through it. Google, read docs, ask for help, whatever it takes. But finish it.
And when you finish it, when you have something that works—even if it's ugly, even if it's simple, even if it's not impressive—you'll feel something shift.
You'll realize: I can do this. I can build things. I'm not just someone who watches videos about programming. I'm someone who programs.
That realization changes everything.
The Long Game
Learning to program is not a sprint. It's not even a marathon. It's more like... learning to play an instrument. Or learning a language. It's something you get better at gradually, over years, through consistent practice.
And that's discouraging at first, because we live in a culture that promises quick results. "Learn to code in 12 weeks!" "Become a developer in 3 months!" "Master JavaScript in 30 days!"
It's bullshit. All of it.
You can learn the basics in 12 weeks. You can get good enough to get a job in 3-6 months if you're focused and intense about it. But mastering anything takes years.
And that's okay. You don't need to master programming to be useful. You just need to be competent.
Competence comes from doing. From building. From solving problems. From struggling and figuring it out.
The 80/20 approach is about being strategic with your time so you become competent as quickly as possible. Not by working harder, but by working on the right things.
Every hour you spend on the 20%—on building, on problem-solving, on actually writing code—is worth five hours spent on the 80%—on courses, on tutorials, on passive learning.
And over months and years, this compounds dramatically.
The person who spends an hour a day building projects will be a developer in six months.
The person who spends an hour a day watching courses will still be watching courses in six months.
Same time investment. Completely different outcomes.
So play the long game. Be patient with yourself. Accept that you'll be confused and uncomfortable for a while. That's part of the process.
But be strategic. Spend your time on the things that actually matter. Build more, consume less. Struggle more, watch less. Create more, copy less.
The 20% is building. Everything else is the 80%.
Common Objections
Let me address some objections I hear to this approach:
"But don't I need to learn the basics before I can build anything?"
You need to learn the absolute basics—variables, functions, loops, conditionals. That's it. That's an afternoon of learning. Then you start building.
You don't need to learn everything before you start. You learn as you build.
"But what if I build it wrong and develop bad habits?"
You will build it wrong. You will develop bad habits. Everyone does.
The alternative—waiting until you know the right way—means you never start.
Build it wrong. Then learn why it's wrong. Then build it better. That's how you actually learn.
"But I don't know what to build."
Build anything. Build a program that does something you wish existed. Build a clone of an app you use. Build something pointless just to practice.
The project doesn't matter. What matters is that you're building.
If you truly can't think of anything, Google "beginner programming projects" and pick one. It doesn't have to be original or impressive. It just has to be something you build yourself.
"But won't I be less hireable if I don't know frameworks/algorithms/advanced topics?"
For your first job, employers care about whether you can code, whether you can learn, and whether you can communicate. That's it.
They'll teach you their framework. They'll teach you their practices. They're not expecting you to know everything.
What they can't teach you is how to think like a programmer. That's what you need to demonstrate.
"But what about all these job listings that require 5+ technologies?"
Job listings are wish lists. They're written by HR people who don't know what they actually need. Ignore the requirements.
If you can build things, you can learn their stack. Apply anyway.
"But this approach seems slow. Won't courses be faster?"
Courses feel faster because you're covering more ground. But covering ground isn't learning.
Building is slow and uncomfortable, but it's the only thing that actually creates capability.
Courses are fast and comfortable, and they create the illusion of progress without the reality of capability.
Which would you rather have: six months of fast, comfortable illusion, or six months of slow, uncomfortable reality that leaves you actually capable?
A Final Mental Model
Here's a mental model that might help crystallize all of this:
Think of programming knowledge like a tree.
The trunk—the core, the foundation, the 20%—is problem-solving ability, basic syntax, and the ability to build. Everything else branches off from that.
Most beginners try to grow the branches before they've grown the trunk. They learn React and Node and algorithms and best practices, and they wonder why none of it sticks, why they still can't build anything.
It's because there's no trunk to attach the branches to.
The trunk grows from doing. From building. From struggling with problems and solving them. It grows slowly, but it grows strong.
Once you have a strong trunk, the branches grow easily. You learn new technologies quickly because they attach to solid understanding. You pick up new concepts naturally because you have the foundation to understand them.
So grow the trunk first. Focus on the 20%. Build the foundation.
The rest will come.
The Conclusion That Changes How You Think
If you remember one thing from this entire essay, remember this:
Programming is not about knowing things. It's about being able to figure things out.
The developers you admire, the ones who seem to know everything, who can build anything—they don't know everything. They've just figured out a lot of things, and they've gotten good at figuring out new things quickly.
The difference between you and them is not knowledge. It's practice. It's repetitions. It's hours spent debugging. It's projects built and problems solved.
And you can close that gap. Not by collecting more information, not by taking more courses, not by memorizing more syntax.
But by building. By struggling. By figuring things out.
The 80/20 rule is just a framework for understanding what actually matters. What actually creates capability. What actually turns you into a developer.
And what matters is this: spend your time building, not watching. Spend your time solving problems, not memorizing solutions. Spend your time struggling, not consuming.
The struggle is the learning. The confusion is the learning. The frustration of being stuck and then the triumph of figuring it out—that's the learning.
Everything else is just information. And information without application is useless.
So close this tab. Open your editor. Think of the simplest thing you can build. And build it.
Not perfectly. Not elegantly. Just functionally.
Build it badly. Build it slowly. Build it messy.
Just build it.
And then build the next thing.
And the next.
And in six months, look back at this moment and realize that the person who started building today became a developer.
While the person who took another course is still taking courses.
The choice is yours. The 20% is waiting.
Now go build.
Top comments (2)
The 80/20 framing is spot on, but what really landed for me is how clearly you separate learning syntax from learning to think. So many people confuse progress bars and completed courses with real capability, and you explain why that gap exists without talking down to beginners.
You're going to waste years of your life learning to code if nobody tells you the truth.
Not because you're not smart enough. Not because programming is impossibly.................Read More 👆