🌟 The Night I Almost Quit (And Why I’m Glad I Didn’t)
It was 2:47 AM on a Tuesday in March 2023. I’d been staring at the same error message for six hours straight: TypeError: Cannot read property 'map' of undefined. My eyes burned. My coffee had gone cold three hours ago. I had a data structures exam in five hours, and I couldn’t even get a simple React component to render.
I remember thinking: “Maybe I’m just not cut out for this.”
That wasn’t the first time I thought about quitting programming. It wouldn’t be the last. But two years later, I’m writing this from my home office after winning two innovation awards, contributing to three open-source projects, and building applications that real people actually use. Not because I’m naturally talented (I’m not), but because I was too stubborn to give up and eventually figured out how to learn effectively.
This is the real story of my programming journey. Not the sanitized LinkedIn version—the messy, frustrating, occasionally triumphant reality of teaching yourself to code in 2023-2025.
“Every expert was once a beginner who refused to give up.” I’ve had this quote taped to my monitor since day one. On bad days, it’s the only thing that keeps me going.
📊 The Numbers Don’t Lie (But They Don’t Tell the Whole Story)
Before I dive into the narrative, let me give you the raw data. This is what two years of consistent (sometimes obsessive) learning looks like:
| Timeline | Focus Area | Achievement | Hours Invested | Failure Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Months 1-3 | HTML/CSS/JS Basics | First working website | ~250 hours | ~70% of code didn’t work |
| Months 4-6 | React Framework | First interactive app | ~300 hours | ~60% debugging time |
| Months 7-12 | Full-Stack Development | Personal blog with backend | ~500 hours | ~50% failed experiments |
| Months 13-18 | Advanced Concepts + Open Source | 3 merged PRs | ~400 hours | ~40% attempts rejected |
| Months 19-24 | AI Application Development | 2 award-winning projects | ~600 hours | ~30% pivots required |
Total investment: 2,050+ hours over 24 months Total projects started: 37 Total projects actually finished: 12 Lines of code written: ~47,000 (including all the broken stuff I deleted) Stack Overflow questions asked: 23 Times I considered switching careers: 8 Best decision ever made: 1
🚀 Phase One: The Confusion Era (Months 0-3)
When “Hello World” Felt Like Rocket Science
I started learning to code in January 2023. Not because I had some grand vision of becoming a software engineer, but because I was bored during winter break and someone told me “coding is the skill of the future.” I had zero computer science background. My previous programming experience was literally copying Visual Basic code from a textbook in high school without understanding what it did.
My first “Hello World” program took 45 minutes to write. Not because it’s complicated, but because I spent 40 minutes trying to figure out why my text editor wasn’t running the code. (Spoiler: I was saving it as a .txt file instead of .html. Yes, really.)
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<!-- My actual first HTML file, saved as "myfile.txt" for 40 minutes -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Jason's First Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello World!</h1>
<p>I have no idea what I'm doing but this is exciting!</p>
</body>
</html>
When I finally got it working and saw “Hello World!” in a browser window, I felt like I’d just discovered fire. That dopamine hit was addictive. I wanted more.
The Great Framework Confusion
Here’s what nobody tells you when you start learning to code: the paradox of choice will paralyze you. I spent two weeks trying to decide which programming language to learn first:
- JavaScript: “Everyone’s using it!” “The job market is huge!” “But the syntax is weird…”
- Python: “Great for beginners!” “AI/ML is hot!” “But what about web development?”
- Java: “Enterprise standard!” “My university teaches it!” “But it’s so verbose…”
- C++: “Ultimate power!” “Game development!” “…nevermind, way too hard.”
I ended up choosing JavaScript for the worst possible reason: I wanted to see visual results immediately, and making websites seemed cooler than printing stuff to a terminal. This turned out to be accidentally brilliant, because seeing your code create actual visual changes is incredibly motivating when you’re a beginner.
My selection criteria (looking back):
- Instant visual feedback: Frontend development showed results immediately
- Gentle learning curve: HTML/CSS/JS felt more approachable than compiled languages
- Job market reality: Full-stack JavaScript developers were in high demand
- Personal interest: I genuinely enjoyed playing with UI design
But here’s what I actually learned in those first three months: languages don’t matter nearly as much as understanding fundamental concepts. Variables, loops, functions, data structures—these work basically the same way in every language. I wasted two weeks agonizing over a choice that turned out to be way less important than I thought.
My First Real Project (A Disaster)
Three weeks into learning, flush with the confidence that only a complete beginner can have, I decided to build a “simple” portfolio website to showcase my (nonexistent) skills. How hard could it be, right?
Here’s what I thought it would take: 2 days Here’s what it actually took: 3 weeks Here’s what I learned: Everything I thought I knew was wrong
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/* My first CSS - I was so proud until I opened it on mobile */
.container {
width: 1200px; /* Why doesn't this work on my phone??? */
margin: 0 auto;
background-color: #ff00ff; /* I thought this looked "professional" */
font-family: Comic Sans MS; /* I'm so sorry */
}
/* I discovered media queries on week 3 */
@media (max-width: 768px) {
.container {
width: 100%; /* Mind = blown when this finally worked */
}
}
Things that went wrong:
- My “responsive” design only worked on my exact screen size
- I used Comic Sans unironically (a designer friend roasted me mercilessly)
- I had 7 different color schemes because I couldn’t decide
- My JavaScript file was one giant function with 300 lines
- I didn’t use Git, so when I broke something, I had to rebuild from memory
- Load time: 8 seconds (mostly because I didn’t compress my 5MB header image)
Things that went right:
- It actually worked (eventually)
- I learned more from this failed project than from 10 tutorials
- The pain of maintaining bad code taught me why good practices exist
- A friend visited my site and said “this is terrible but I can tell you’re learning”
That last comment, weirdly, meant everything. Someone could see I was making progress even though the output was garbage.
🔧 Phase Two: Building Foundations (Months 3-6)
The Framework Revelation
Month four was when I discovered React. And oh my god, did it break my brain.
I’d spent three months thinking in terms of direct DOM manipulation—click this button, change this element, update this text. React’s “everything is state and the UI is a function of state” philosophy made zero sense to me at first.
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// My first React component - I was so confused about why this worked
import React, { useState } from 'react';
function Counter() {
const [count, setCount] = useState(0);
// "Wait, I just... change the variable? And React updates the HTML?
// Where's the document.getElementById???"
return (
<div>
<p>Count: {count}</p>
<button onClick={() => setCount(count + 1)}>
Increment
</button>
</div>
);
}
// It took me a week to understand why this was better than jQuery
I spent a full weekend watching YouTube tutorials, reading documentation, and building tiny components until it finally clicked. The moment I understood React hooks, I felt like I’d leveled up in a video game. Suddenly, complex UI interactions that would have taken me hundreds of lines of vanilla JavaScript were just… a few lines of declarative code.
Project: Todo App (Yes, I Built a Todo App)
Every developer builds a todo app. It’s like a rite of passage. Mine was special because it took me three complete rewrites before I got it right.
Version 1: Vanilla JavaScript, stored everything in arrays, no persistence. Refreshing the page deleted everything. Brilliant.
Version 2: React with state, stored in localStorage. Worked great until I tried to edit a todo and accidentally created duplicates. Didn’t understand key props yet.
Version 3: React with proper state management, unique IDs, localStorage persistence, edit functionality, filtering, and the ability to mark todos as complete. This one actually worked.
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// Version 3 - Finally doing it right
function TodoApp() {
const [todos, setTodos] = useState(() => {
const saved = localStorage.getItem('todos');
return saved ? JSON.parse(saved) : [];
});
const [input, setInput] = useState('');
// Save to localStorage on every change
useEffect(() => {
localStorage.setItem('todos', JSON.stringify(todos));
}, [todos]);
const addTodo = () => {
if (!input.trim()) return; // Learned about validation the hard way
setTodos([...todos, {
id: Date.now(), // Not perfect, but works for this scale
text: input,
completed: false,
createdAt: new Date().toISOString()
}]);
setInput('');
};
const toggleTodo = (id) => {
setTodos(todos.map(todo =>
todo.id === id
? { ...todo, completed: !todo.completed }
: todo
));
};
const deleteTodo = (id) => {
setTodos(todos.filter(todo => todo.id !== id));
};
return (
<div className="todo-app">
<h1>My Tasks</h1>
<div className="input-section">
<input
value={input}
onChange={(e) => setInput(e.target.value)}
onKeyPress={(e) => e.key === 'Enter' && addTodo()}
placeholder="What needs to be done?"
/>
<button onClick={addTodo}>Add</button>
</div>
<ul className="todo-list">
{todos.map(todo => (
<li key={todo.id}>
<span
onClick={() => toggleTodo(todo.id)}
style=
>
{todo.text}
</span>
<button onClick={() => deleteTodo(todo.id)}>Delete</button>
</li>
))}
</ul>
</div>
);
}
What this project taught me:
- Component lifecycle and effects
- State immutability (learned after mutating state directly and wondering why React didn’t update)
- The importance of unique keys in lists
- Basic UX patterns (keyboard support, input validation, empty states)
- How to structure larger React applications
- The satisfaction of building something that actually works consistently
I still use this todo app personally. There’s something deeply satisfying about using software you built yourself.
The Backend Rabbit Hole
Month five was when I realized: “Wait, all this frontend stuff is great, but where does the data actually live?”
Enter Node.js, Express, and my first encounter with databases. I chose to learn backend JavaScript (Node.js) instead of picking up a new language because I wanted to focus on concepts rather than syntax. This turned out to be smart—learning full-stack JavaScript meant I could context-switch between frontend and backend without changing mental models.
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// My first Express server - felt like magic
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.send('Hello from my server!');
});
app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log('Server running on port 3000!');
// I literally yelled "IT'S ALIVE!" when this worked
});
But then came databases. Oh boy, did databases kick my ass. SQL vs NoSQL. Schemas. Migrations. Indexes. Foreign keys. ORMs. My brain hurt.
I made every mistake possible:
- Stored passwords in plain text (please don’t do this)
- Forgot to add indexes and wondered why queries were slow
- Didn’t understand SQL injection and left myself wide open to attacks
- Crashed my database by forgetting WHERE clauses on UPDATE statements
- Lost data because I didn’t understand transactions
The MongoDB moment: I eventually started with MongoDB because it felt more JavaScript-native and I didn’t have to worry about schemas initially. This was both good (lower friction) and bad (learned proper database design much later).
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// My first database integration - a simple user system
const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const UserSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
username: {
type: String,
required: true,
unique: true
},
email: {
type: String,
required: true,
unique: true,
lowercase: true // Learned this after duplicate email issues
},
passwordHash: String, // At least I learned to hash passwords!
createdAt: {
type: Date,
default: Date.now
}
});
const User = mongoose.model('User', UserSchema);
// Simple CRUD operations
app.post('/api/users', async (req, res) => {
try {
const user = new User(req.body);
await user.save();
res.status(201).json(user);
} catch (error) {
res.status(400).json({ error: error.message });
}
});
