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i started coding at 7. here's what i'd tell my younger self

· 2 min read
Andrei Sherikhov
Andrei Sherikhov
18 y/o dev from Colombia

i wrote my first lines of code when i was 7. today i'm 18, so that's eleven years of "quick experiments" that sometimes turn into real projects.

what actually mattered​

1. copy everything, at first. my early "projects" were tutorials with the names changed. that's fine. copying is how your hands learn the syntax. just don't stop there — change one thing, break it, fix it.

2. finish something boring. i have a graveyard of exciting half-projects. the thing that taught me the most was a boring tool that i actually deployed and used for a month. finish line > perfect line.

3. build for a real person. AyudaEnCali stopped being a react exercise the moment i thought "my neighbor needs to find a shelter with a bad signal and 5% battery". every fallback in that app comes from that image, not from a blog post.

4. write tests when you're scared, not when you're confident. in the fire detection project the test suite existed because i had 48 hours and no room to find out the websocket was broken. green check = keep going.

5. linux. not because it's cool (ok, partly), but because nothing teaches you how a computer works like breaking your own setup on a friday night.

what i'm doing now​

  • maintaining AyudaEnCali and Áureo
  • learning pytorch and react native
  • shipping open source stuff around ethereum and ai
  • trying to reply to messages faster than once a month

if you're 7, 12 or 17 and reading this: you don't need permission, you need a terminal and one idea that annoys you enough to fix it.