You Need To Walk Before You Can Run

Nowadays, there is absolutely no shortage of inspirational content on the Internet. I cannot browse my LinkedIn feed for more than 30 seconds before seeing some post about how amazing it was that Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook as just a college student or that Steve Jobs dropped out of college to start Apple from a garage. Yes, there is value in this kind of positive, “go get ‘em” content, but when it’s so omnipresent (I’m looking at you LinkedIn), it leads to people overestimating their abilities and throwing pragmatism out the window. If I took a shot every time I saw a student, bootcamper, or some other type of junior developer say they’re going to build the next Facebook for Y or Uber for X only to get 10 users and flop, I would be dead.

Software is limitless and beautiful, but it still follows the basic rules of any skill. Software, like everything else, is something you get better at over time as you put more and more practice into it. You don’t start off playing basketball in the NBA; you play it as a kid and then you really fine-tune your skills across high school and college ball. These shallow inspirational posts often leave out these details as well; for example, Mark Zuckerberg started coding when he was 8, so he was actually already incredibly good at coding when he started Facebook.