Programming Is Free
8 days ago
- #programming
- #learning
- #startups
- A college student on spring break sought advice for his marketplace startup for college students.
- The student was paying $200/month for a slow, barely functional website, believing an upgrade would fix performance issues.
- The author contrasts this with their own start using a $60 defective laptop and free tools like Vim and PHP.
- Today, beginners often start with expensive subscriptions and cloud services before writing their first line of code.
- The author argues that free tools (Git, VS Code, Python, etc.) are still available and sufficient for learning.
- New developers are influenced by bootcamps and YouTubers promoting paid tools, leading to passive learning.
- The hidden cost of passive learning is time and focus, trading deep work for easy dopamine hits from tutorials.
- The author advises that all you need to start is a free text editor, a language runtime, and a problem to solve.
- The greatest gift for a new programmer is perseverance—figuring things out through trial and error.
- The tools for learning have always been free; don’t let influencers convince you otherwise.