How to Get Good at Coding

Build Real Projects

Algorithm problems are training wheels. Real mastery comes from building products. A janky app you shipped beats 100 solved LeetCode problems.

Because shipping teaches you: architecture, error handling, user experience, deployment, debugging in production. LeetCode teaches you none of that.

Read Other People's Code

Read great code. GitHub repos. Open source projects. Notice patterns. Notice simplicity. Notice when someone solves something in 5 lines instead of 50.

Your brain absorbs patterns. After reading 50 great implementations, you start writing better code without thinking.

Debug Relentlessly

Don't google the error. Sit with it. Read the stack trace. Think about what's happening. When you finally fix it, that knowledge sticks.

Every bug you solve yourself becomes pattern recognition. Shortcuts now = weakness later.

Embrace Discomfort

The best learning happens outside your knowledge. Pick a language you've never used. Build something substantial. Suffer.

If you're comfortable, you're not growing.

Expertise Is Pattern Recognition

An expert coder isn't smarter. They've seen 10,000 bugs. Your bug is bug #789 to them. They recognize it instantly.

This takes 5-10 years of writing code professionally. There's no shortcut. Accept it.