I've been writing code long enough to have strong opinions about how things should work. Not all of them are right, but they're mine. Here's what I believe.
Build it twice, understand it once
- The first version teaches you what you're actually building
- Refactoring isn't failure, it's progress
- "Works on my machine" means you haven't shipped yet
- Every rewrite makes you a better developer
Side projects are your real portfolio
- GitHub stars don't matter, shipped projects do
- Build things you'd actually use yourself
- Your portfolio should be weird and personal, not a template
- If you're not embarrassed by old code, you're not growing
Learn in public, fail in public
- Document your mistakes, not just your wins
- Someone else is stuck on the problem you just solved
- Writing forces you to actually understand
- The best way to master something is to teach it
The best developers are lazy (strategically)
- If you're doing it more than twice, automate it
- Good developers write code. Great developers delete code.
- Premature optimization will waste your time
- Sometimes the simple solution is fine
Constraints breed creativity
- Deadlines force decisions
- "Just one more feature" is how projects die
- Shipping an 80% solution beats perfecting a 0% solution
Code is temporary, learning is permanent
- Production code will be rewritten anyway
- Every bug is a lesson if you understand it
- The technology will change, the principles won't
- Your brain is the best asset you're building
Details compound into excellence
- Smooth animations aren't "just polish"
- Error messages should actually help users
- Accessibility isn't optional
- Small things separate amateur from professional
Community over competition
- Share your code, share your knowledge
- Other developers are teachers, not threats
- Credit your inspirations, always
- The best ideas come from remixing others' work
Shipping beats perfection
- Done is better than perfect
- Users can't give feedback on undeployed code
- MVPs are supposed to be embarrassing
- You'll never feel "ready" to launch
Curiosity is your career moat
- Follow the rabbit holes
- "I wonder if I could build that" is the best question
- Try technologies outside your comfort zone
- Learn things that seem useless (they won't be)
Stay humble, stay hungry
- There's always someone better (learn from them)
- There's always someone newer (help them)
- "I don't know" is a powerful phrase
- Being wrong is how you learn what's right
These aren't rules. They're observations from countless hours of debugging, shipping, and occasionally succeeding. Your principles might look different, and that's good.
Happy coding!