How I went from zero coding experience to making money with it (as a lawyer):

The framework:

Understand the landscape → Pick your stack → Train the muscle → Stress test it → Ship & feedback

- Getting acquainted with the terminology

I started binge-watching dev YouTube. Anything and everything. Didn’t matter if I understood it. I just needed to get fluent in the language of tech. Get familiar with it. Over time, the words started making sense, and a roadmap started to form.

→ This was like learning the rules of a new game before trying to play.

- Following a structured course

After a lot of exploration, I concluded that web development was the easiest entry point. App development required an extensive setup. With web, I just needed a code editor and a browser. So I bought a full-stack course on Udemy for ₹350 and started learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Then I realized I needed to go deeper, so I got individual courses for each topic, still at Rs. 350 each by making new accounts! (Sorry Udemy) The theory laid the foundation.

→ Structure removed the guesswork and gave my learning momentum.

- Follow-along courses / assisted coding

The most fun part about coding is building something.

But at this point, I only knew programming fundamentals, and that got boring quickly. So I started coding along with tutorials to build muscle memory and concept recall. I was also practicing programming fundamentals on Codewars

Practice > theory.

→ Watching isn’t learning. Putting in the reps is.

- Build projects

Since my entry point was frontend development, I went to Frontend Mentor and started converting designs into real web pages. No hand-holding. Maximum friction. Supercharged learning! I started with simple HTML/CSS problems. From there, the difficulty increased as interactivity was introduced and JavaScript came into play. This was the biggest needle mover early in the learning journey.

→ Projects forced me to apply what I had learned and exposed the gaps in my understanding.

- Portfolio website

Then I bought a domain and built a personal website using React.

I hosted my design-to-code projects and simple applications that used public APIs and basic CRUD applications, and started sharing it with people to create a feedback loop.

→Identity shift: From learner to builder

Building things is SUPER fun, but there was also an underlying assumption I was testing:

“Can I learn a new skill from scratch, create proof of work and skill, and then get paid for it, all in 6 months?”