print("Hello World: It's 2025, Where Do I Even Begin?")

As a kid, I was always fascinated by all kinds of tech. I would often disappear into my own world for hours taking apart an old radio, tv, or phone. This fascination developed into an almost obsession with the Hollywood style programming and hacker movie characters.

LOL, I remember how I would always substitute the character with myself, racing against time in front of a computer screen full of code, trying to remotely deactivate a world threatening device. Unfortunately though, due to socio-economic reasons, coding remained a fantasy out of reach for all of my childhood and half of my twenties. It became a forgotten dream that would almost never be revisited again.

Fast forward to today? Well, I am now old enough to buy myself a second hand pc, but… lets just say my first attempt at writing a functional script took the Hollywood right out of the fantasy, lucky enough though, I now have more reasons to learn how to code than just to look cool and be the guy that saves the world under the pressure of a countdown timer. Although, I wouldn’t mind that too :).

I will spare you the sob roller-coaster ride story that has been my life, and jump straight to this year; 2025. So what finally pushed me to setting up an environment and learning an actual programming language? and no, it was not to rekindle the childhood Hollywood driven passion of coding - it was something more immediate.

1. 2025 And What Pushed Me To Commit:

POV: It’s 2025, I have been working under a fixed-term contract with a minimum wage stipend for 3 years and 10 months, the struggle is real and I am fed up to the core of my soul with the empty promises of permanent employment with a full salary and benefits. But, I cannot just leave…

After nearly 4 years of temporary contracts and empty promises, I realized that no one was coming to rescue my career. If I wanted change, I had to build it myself.

Enter the “How to make money online?” phase, I spent months looking up and trying things I could do to make money online. Just a few that made it on my list; drop shipping, forex trading, YouTube Channel… and more. Most didn’t work for my budget, and others just frustrated me more than I could handle.

Around this same time, I was doing a lot of personal work, budgeting, and business ideas noting all on my phone using various journal type and note taking apps, most of which are just not made for the way I want to organize my thoughts, research, and ideas. This is when my frustration reached a tipping point and I wondered, wouldn’t it be nice if I could just design my own notebooks app? Something I could use for years to come and put an end to this daily frustration loop, while I try to improve my life.

I had no other option but to embark on this journey as a solo learner, I wasn’t leaving the job to enroll in some college, and I definitely wasn’t paying for a course… Even if I wanted to.

I had my reason to start, I knew I was doing this solo.

And so the journey began.

2. The First Steps:

A quick short-cut:

I surprisingly didn’t take long after that thought to actually start writing my first line of code, I skipped the hours and hours of confusing YouTube video sessions phase I hear so much about. Because I had already been using Ai chatbots like DeepSeek and chat gpt to learn a lot of other things much faster than I would otherwise, my first instinct was to open up both bots and start discussing what it would take to learn programming and what the best route for a complete beginner would be.

I had already witnessed the potential of AI in my own life, so there was no way I was choosing any path that wasn’t of the least resistance for me, considering that I also have a day job to do and thus cannot dedicate all my time to just learning how to code, this was the way for me.

I will get more technical on another article I plan to write as soon as I have published this one. so the short version of what I got out of this was;

1. You have to choose a language based on your industry of interest

2. Build your environment

3. It is best to start with a project as soon as possible rather than to bury yourself under theory that you might have forgotten by the time you actually have to write your first project

4. I also got a lot of project planning help in terms of how to structure a project and break it into manageable phases.

Choosing a language:

All I wanted was a language that would get me to the completion of my journal/notebook project as fast as possible, I didn’t need to build rocket systems, data analytics tools, or the next amazon website.

After doing some research on the various languages and looking at videos of what I now know to be their syntax, I decided that python would be the quickest for me to understand and actually see results in, otherwise I was afraid that I might give up along the way and run out of patience if I had chosen one of the difficult languages.

All I needed to know was that python would work for the program I was trying to build and I was sold, I figured if I could learn to think like a developer and understand how to use one language, I could transfer those skills, discipline, and patience to a more advanced or “valuable” language.

Building an environment and writing my first script:

With the help of AI, I was able to understand that all I needed as an environment to start working with python was two things; 1. Python itself which I got from python.org, and 2. A code editor, I ended up choosing vs code because it was free and had all the features I needed to start coding. I figured anything else I would add into the environment as I came upon the need along my coding journey.

First coding experience:

After the famous print(“Hello World”) script ran successfully, it was time to move on to the journal project.

When I said I was taking short cuts earlier, I really meant it. Within 30 minutes of installing my environment I was already writing the first script for my journal project. I was leveraging the power of AI, and all I would do is have the AI generated code on one part of the screen while I was manually typing it into vs code, line by line. I basically got handed three scripts; write_journal.py, read_journal.py, and main.py.

Another issue less mentioned in the beginner coder industry, is the painful process of being forced to learn to type the right way with both hands and proper finger placement. And because i didn’t want to struggle with this for months, I decided that I would only code using the right method so I can keep my eyes focused on the editor. It took me +4hrs to type and properly debug the basic 30 line script (because yes, chatbots are far from perfect, and my fingers were just not up to the task yet.).

My forearms and fingers were sore, my brain was hot from trying to solve all those bugs, and all i had to show for it was a script that took string input, and saved it to a .txt file, using the current datetime as title for the document. And yet, I was proud, I slept like I had laid the foundations for the next billion dollar program, I bet Mr. Zuckerberg couldn’t have felt any prouder than this when he made progress while founding his social media site.

I did the rest of the basic version of the .txt file writing and handling program, I thought I would be building a OneNote style notebook app within months with the help of AI. But it turns out when you tell it you are a beginner, it will really take you through the basics before showing you anything complex.

2. What’s Next?:

Because now I know what is really not possible, I have calm down with my projections and expectations. I find myself studying the same basic 3 script with +- 30 lines per script program to fully grasp what I am telling the computer to do. I enjoy challenging myself to rewrite parts of the script to help myself fully grasp the concepts of creating functions and how the existing ones work. I also get a rush when I spot a few lines of code that can be compacted into one line and to see it actually work.

My journey is not starting off perfectly, but I do love the progress I am seeing and I know I will improve on my journey and how it is structured as the time goes on.

I have decided that I need a way to document all the progress I am making, and what better way than a blog? i plan to create a few sections of the blog to focus on various topics. But the one I look forward to most is one that will focus on the technical knowledge as I learn it, because I believe that the best way to learn is by teaching. This blog will also help me get the typing exercise that my fingers need so I can reserve my mental energy for understanding syntax and logic while I learn.

There is so much ahead to look forward to. I am also learning about collaboration sites like Hashnode, github, and more where I will also get to learn from people with years of experience and possibly rethink and restructure my learning journey.

As of yet, I am still doing research on potential career or business paths to consider so I can shape my journey along such paths.

Follow along as I turn these 30-line scripts into a full journal app. Next up, I’ll be diving into the actual code and sharing what I am learning about Python functions and file handling.