I’ve coded on and off for about 5 years. But frankly, I’m not very far in my learning journey. Much of this has been compounded by AI now coming to the fore and making it very easy to build things, but harder to learn them.

Please note if you want the latest post it is at the bottom of the page

The problem is that if you are someone who likes solving problems, you have always focused on the quickest path to do it. Before it was Google, now its LLMs. How do you ensure you are still learning how to think? Well you have to do it the old fashioned way.

17/03/25

Started learning Flutter today, but all I got done after 2 hours was getting the setup to work, for a non-coder this was a lot harder than javascript. Mainly, the difficulty was trying to get the virtual machine to work and hot reload. I have managed to do this, and load a basic app. Fun times!

Of course, I naturally then asked copilot to make the idea I had in mind and it did this in 5 minutes. So I’ve banned myself from VSCode for now and will come back to it in due course. If I’m going to learn anything I have to spend the time.

18/03/25

Today, I started working through Codecademy, the beginner course. It is a little bit complicated in the language for someone without much coding experience. So whenever I get lost I get ChatGPT (for now this seems better for Claude for this use case) to explain it to me. After it is explained to me, I then I asked it to do a quiz on each new concept or line of code, depending on the context. It then explains things in more friendly terms as I need them. This has really helped me understand what each block is doing. My brains thinking aligns (I believe) works well with coding, but it just needs some prompting of its own for concepts to go in. I’m trying to go slow and steady rather than sprint (which is what I normally do). I will complete a lesson this way each night with a minimum 1 hour spent.

22/03/2025

I’ve set a target of 30 minutes of coding a day, it’s on the fridge. My girlfriend is focused on building her own (unrelated) business, her tasks are next to mine. It’s a good way to keep us both motivated. I moved over to freecodecamp.org and donated while I was halfway through the pyramid generator (part of Javascript Data Structures and Algorithms)

I made the donation for a few reasons

1.) First and foremost, it’s a great product and a great mission that deserves support. For much of my life, I have been cheap on things like this. I want to be better.

2.) Removing the scarcity mindset, focusing on abundance. What you put out you get back.

3.) I am more likely to stay committed to the cause if I have given some money to it.

I am enjoying it as the challenges are mostly more than one part. They require a bit of thinking through. It’s been good to think through the basics.

Whilst I am still learning, I want to keep my 1 or 2 AI assisted projects going, as they can keep bringing in the money while I learn.

My site: aplant.org is hitting 900+ views per month. I want to get to 10k as a first stop and then 100k which I think is in reach. I have a lot of optimisation to do.

25/03/25

Downloaded “Go Book” last night and have been working through it. I had tried it before, but after spending a bit more time in the algorithms & data structures, this now makes more sense. So today, after work, I have spent 1 hour working through intro to Golang on Codecademy. So far I like it, although now I have got to numerical types it seems to be getting scarier. I feel this is the hurdle I must overcome to unlock a lot of potential.

I will see what happens once I have completed this. I know I could just use Node.js for the backend, but I like the idea of being able to make an API or something more advanced in the backend. IDK. I’m enjoying having to think about how to solve problems, and I think it will help with javascript too. Maybe I am wrong, but I feel like the thinking is coming along.

Now to bed with GoBook. I like reading before bed and going back over the concepts to cement them. I like thinking of efficient ways to do simply tasks using Go. It’s fun! At least for now – I’m sure the dopamine will run out soon!

04/02/2025

I worked hard this week, clocking in around 10 hours of coding for the week. But honestly it didn’t feel like a lot of time. There are so many concepts to learn and work on.

I’ve refrained from spending any money on new courses, although I have some cash from selling my website. I want use that for bets and things I really need. Right now I just need to do the work, learn the concepts.

This week I did:

• bit more of the data structures and algo course on freecodecamp
• moved to intermediate javascript on sololearn
• some Golang in VSCode > todolist type app and some other playing around
• vibe coded too much

After reflecting on the above, I realized two things:

• I need to focus on just javascript for now and get very good at it, I can tinker with Golang later
• I need a project to test my skills on that is not built with AI

So I’ve started a project that is something I’ve been on/off building for a while. But this time I am building it brick by brick with copilot/autocomplete switched off in VSCode.

The app is a bit of a Strava for other goals. Rather than fitness. There is a twist to this idea but it will take me a bit of time to do.

I am using AI Chat inside VSCode (Gemini 2.0 Flash) for it to help with any questions, but I am telling it not to give me the code answers unless I really need them. Instead, it is providing hints to help me think more about the problem I am trying to solve. Since I skipped a lot of css tutorials I am learning that as I go.

Currently, I’ve started to fill in the HTML structure I want to use for my app. I’ve already learned a lot more that you simply don’t cover in some of these tutorials. I aim to get a very basic UI created in the next two weeks. After which I will try and work out node.js and getting it live on the internet as a practice. I want the following functions:

• Add a goal
• Track a goal
• Update a goal
• Make above all look pretty

After this, I will focus on the social aspect which is (I presume) where it gets quite complicated…

If you’ve read this far you can see I link to jump technologies. I promise not to do this much more until I’ve become proficient in js/node.js.