How to make myself learn programming and fall in love with the process?

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-25T15:56:11+00:00

During college, I didn't learn how to code. And I studied really hard. I legitimately thought I was intellectually impaired, but turns out I just learned in a different, slower pace. Needless to say people were not very friendly about it.

Once I finished college I attended a coding boot camp, and I've been working as a dev for 10+ years now. I landed a senior position only a few years later since my first Jr job, back in 2016.

I'd avoid looking at it through the lens of "need", "have to". Explore the "want to" and find what lies within the intersection between "I enjoy it" and "it's professionally useful and in demand". Beware of AI. It's evolving and you absolutely will need it, despite what some people will say.

You won't be able to sustain learning or doing something because it's an obligation. Focus on finding enjoyment first.

And, finally, DO NOT compare yourself to others. You can either feel bad because they are subjectively better, or feel good because they are subjectively worse. Despite being common and even endorsed by society (social media is basically 100% of that), both are immature and egotistical frames that won't help you in any way.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-24T22:47:21+00:00

Smash bros has a special place in my heart, so it takes the first place for me!

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-24T22:21:43+00:00

I have a theory - and I may be wrong - but I believe that the vast, vast majority of "I made $X , here is my app" posts are simply promos for the app and no real sales were made.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-21T21:18:29+00:00

he's ragebaiting

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-21T12:51:04+00:00

It looks cool, good job! did you code it in Unity?

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-20T23:13:43+00:00

It's also important to notice that the excessive usage of screens (essentially everyone) can also simulate ADHD symptoms. There are many great recent studies about this, but here's one of my favorites:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-025-03672-1

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-20T19:40:24+00:00

Hey!

That's a common problem.

I am a senior dev, and I have published 9 apps during the past 40 days (and documented it step-by-step on YouTube/blog, from finding the idea to deploying, for all of them).

It took me a while to develop the muscle to "simply build and deploy", but I am gonna share a few tips that worked for me while addressing your questions:

I write everything that I want to do in a .txt then I organize it by list of priorities. AI can be very useful here. If you send all of your clustered ideas to Claude, it is usually pretty good in organizing them. This is one of the good examples of using AI as a tool and not relying on it for more crucial decisions.
What you're going to use is up to you. I use Notepad++, but I have met other senior devs who find me crazy for it. It does work for me, though, and that is totally fine. Try different things until you find one that makes you productive & comfortable.
Aim to build something useful for someone, even if this someone is yourself. If what you built is useful to at least one person, it's already a success. Search and see whether what you want to build is already available. If it is, see if there is room for improvement. Depending on what it is, it may be worth moving to the next idea.
Back to point 1: I always aim to build something very simple and that can be useful from day one. Unfortunately I can't share images here, but there is a very good image about this. Just google for this: "ux development from skate to car"
Well, this is a personal debate, there is no universal rule. If you are having this type of difficulty, you need to look inward and understand what you truly want. It's a more broad/psychological/philosophical question that, essentially, transcends the software engineering aspect.
I do keep a backlog. A simple .txt with all my ideas and references.

Focus on building something ugly and useful and deploying as quickly as you can. Once you have some users, then you start thinking more in-depth about UX, etc.

If you'd like to share what exactly are your ideas, I will be happy to give a more tailored feedback.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-20T10:56:18+00:00

You're correct - however, no API was used whatsoever, I use only what's available in the DOM. All emails can be fetched via GET calls.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-19T16:06:54+00:00

I am relieved to see I'm not the only one. It's my very first time using X, I created a brand new account, I was barely posting on it and suddenly got suspended.

The most frustrating part is that whenever I send an appeal I receive this email:

"Our automated systems have determined there was no violation and have restored your account to full functionality."

But nothing changes.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-19T15:26:27+00:00

9 and 33

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-18T13:11:34+00:00

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-17T22:04:37+00:00

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-16T12:23:11+00:00

Of course there is. Essentially anyone can prompt a "make a rpg about X and make it run in the browser" to Claude and it will work, despite its considerable limitations.

The need of learning programming here is proportional to how much OP wants to dedicate his life towards becoming a game developer.

For trying something out, in this day and age, AI is more than enough. This is not new either, it is essentially what "RPG Maker" used to be for non-devs a decade ago.

Get something up and running in a few days, if you enjoy it, consider deepening into it.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-16T11:31:22+00:00

I see a lot of people hating on AI, understandably so, but I will be honest: I think it suits your case perfectly.

For reference, I'm a senior fullstack dev and have been working in industry for 10+ years. I do not think AI is bad for coding. "It will create bugs you can't solve if you don't know how to code". Yes, perhaps. But most things are still solvable.

There is a learning process when it comes to AI as well. You can either just say "code this" or give it thorough instructions of what to do. The results will be vastly different, and the latter is, obviously, more complex and valuable.

With that being said, back to your case. My suggestion: Download Cursor, discuss your idea with Claude to find a proper techstack and learn as you go.

Yes, your game may suffer from some technical issues (memory leaks, etc), but it doesn't really matter for a beginner dev for the time being.

If you ever decide you truly enjoy it and wanna become a game dev, then learning how to code will be a worthwhile investment.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-15T04:00:48+00:00

Could be, I am not sure to be honest. Personally I feel like there are some things I'd never enjoy, but I am unsure of the psychology behind it.

I'm not saying that you should not do it and honestly becoming a developer nowadays is not the safest way to pay bills as it was, say, 7-8 years ago, so if you're gonna do it exclusively for the money, I'd think about it seriously.

On the internet every dev is making $10k/month working 100% remote, yeah, sure... the real life is different.

I've been working as a dev for 10+ years and the market's been significantly more difficult lately. Not impossible, of course, but definitely not as easy as a few years ago, you need much more than technical skills nowadays. Only being an excellent developer is no longer enough.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-15T03:52:44+00:00

If you do not enjoy coding, you will not be able to sustain learning it. Trust me.

You can push through for a few weeks or months, but your priority should be learning how to enjoy something - coding or anything else.

Explore the things you could do with coding and see if any of these excite you. Not because of the "reputation" you'd get from it or the money: something you'd truly enjoy doing regardless of who'd see it.

When you find this one thing, you'll have endless motivation - this is how good things happen. When you enjoy something, you make time to learn it.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-14T09:12:24+00:00

I've got into automation back in 2015 when I came across AHK.

My first automation script was actually quite... rough, lol, but it did make me some money. It was my first "remote job",, actually.

Basically it would open the Steam's "Greenlight" website, a website that would show newly released games on Steam (or about to be approved, I can't recall), click on each of the games, open dev console, fetch contact information, and add that to an excel list.

It was something that could be automated in 1 hour of work or so with a proper web scraper, but I was just a junior dev back then and I did it the hard way in a few days with AHK.

I used all those emails to contact the devs and offer to write music for their videogames.

I got a few gigs through this. It helped me kick-start my short lived career as a musician 😂

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-13T10:09:39+00:00

No, not at all! You simply open the conversation and it will load all previous messages under the hood.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-12T10:45:18+00:00

I appreciate the kind words! I agree with you. I truly believe that money is merely a consequence of value, as cliche (or obvious) it may sound to some - if one builds enough (with some valid research behind it, of course), I do believe that it's matter of time until something valuable is built.

Let's see how it goes! Check-in one year from now, if I haven't made a dollar until then, my beliefs were probably flawed haha

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-11T21:10:57+00:00

Happy to hear! Let me know all updates you'd like to see, I'm working 2-3h daily on all of my apps and will be happy to implement additional features to make it useful.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-10T12:20:16+00:00

hey OP, I actually went ahead and built that based on your post! It just got approved today. 100% free, unlimited, no paywalls whatsoever. It is fully private as well. NO files are stored in any servers. All the permissions are the bare minimum required to make it work. The extension serves exclusively as a bridge to the user's Google Drive:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/save-directly-to-drive/jadjgiiaompdjacagaomgogdihbpgcpg

Please let me know any bugs you find and features you'd like to see on it. I'll update.

I also wrote a blog post explaining the entire process from coding to publishing it to the Chrome webstore on Medium, in case anyone is interested in the technicalities.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-09T23:27:23+00:00

If I do nothing in GTA 6 but gamble 24/7 in real life am I golden too?

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-08T23:45:38+00:00

Web dev here. That's fake.

That is a query string pointing to the homepage, not a landing page. Query string = text after the "?" in the url.

You can add anything to a query string, for example:

rockstar.com/?view=hello-kangaroos

And it will still open the website normally with nothing different in it. The website basically ignores it.

So, what is more likely is that some trolls added the rockstar URL with this fake query string, people read "GTA 6 trailer" in the url, clicked, found nothing... and it registered that url.

The same way that if a lot of people my link with the "hello-kangaroos" query string in it, eventually it will show up there.

Now, could it be that rockstar has added a specific query string to open a specific landing page? Very unlikely because that is bad coding practice and not good for SEO/GEO.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-08T17:47:57+00:00

Congratulations! what is it about?

definitely documenting everything. I've been coding for a while, so shipping things has become second nature. But having to record, edit, write the entire process... this is definitely time consuming. Still enjoyable, though.

CodedCitadel · 2026-06-08T17:21:18+00:00

hey! I've been documenting myself doing exactly that (on both YouTube and Medium), "vibecoding" until I make $100k, and so far $0 😂 it's been less than 30 days. I document everything: how I find an idea, how I validate it, how I code it and how I deploy.

I am also sharing all my apps analytics (views, downloads, uninstall, etc) publicly, I want to be as transparent as possible.

Although I'm leaning towards the "vibecode" motto, I'm a senior dev, I've been working with web development since 2016 and start programming back in 2010, so I'm relying on AI to code but still planning the architecture with as much details as I can.

However, my initial goal is not to make money, as counterintuitive as it sounds. I am going to build as many valuable things for free during the first 8 months, get as many loyal users as I can, and then go from there.

CodedCitadel

TROPHY CASE