i didn't plan to get into coding.

i saw one video. that's it.

the video

i was sitting with my dad and uncle in jaipur. scrolling youtube shorts. doing nothing important.

one clip popped up. some developer talking about how google showed up at his house because of something he built. not an email. they actually came. i don't even remember his name. i should probably go find it but i won't.

i don't know why that specific video hit.

it wasn't motivation. it wasn't "this is so cool."

it was just this quiet thought: i want that.

no plan behind it. no idea how. just that.

my uncle noticed i was paying attention and said there's someone in our family who does this. a cousin. been doing it for 10+ years. made serious money from it.

i had never thought of "coding" as something real before that. it always felt like some abstract thing people in other countries did. like being an astronaut or something.

that was the first time it felt… reachable. i guess.

the phone phase

i didn't have a laptop.

so i started on my phone. like an idiot. but also like someone who had no other option.

i used some random html editor app. i don't even remember the name. it had ads. it crashed. the keyboard took up half the screen. i was typing html and css with my thumbs. copy-pasting code from random youtube tutorials into this tiny editor. breaking layouts. refreshing pages that barely worked.

everything was slow and awkward and i hated it.

most of what i made looked bad. like really bad. 2005 myspace bad.

but i kept opening the editor anyway. i don't know why. there was nothing else to do i guess.

at some point it became obvious — this isn't enough. if i want to build anything real, i need an actual machine. the phone was a toy. i needed a laptop.

convincing my parents

this part wasn't instant. this part was annoying.

they weren't against it. they just didn't see why it mattered yet. which is fair. i didn't even know what i was asking for.

so i had to explain something i barely understood myself. what coding is. what i wanted to do. why a laptop wasn't just "extra." i kept saying "i need it for coding" like that meant something.

it took time. multiple conversations. repeating the same thing in different ways. my dad would ask "what will you make" and i'd say "apps" and he'd say "what apps" and i'd say "i don't know yet." this happened like 10 times.

eventually they agreed. no big emotional moment. no crying. just… okay. fine.

i think they were just tired of me asking.

first day with a laptop

i didn't install games. which is wild because i love games. i just forgot.

didn't set anything up properly. didn't even know what that meant.

opened youtube. searched "how to code."

started.

python → javascript (skip the middle part)

everyone said start with python. so i did.

it was confusing. things broke for no clear reason. syntax errors. logic errors. code that worked one minute and didn't the next. no structure in how i was learning — just random youtube tutorials stitched together. one guy said use functions. another guy said use classes. i didn't know the difference.

i made a calculator. i made a "guess the number" game. i felt like a genius for like 5 minutes. then i tried to make something actually useful and realized i knew nothing.

but that phase mattered somehow. it forced me to understand how code executes. what logic actually means. how to sit with something not working for 3 hours and not throw the laptop.

after that i moved to javascript. that was always the goal. i didn't care about theory — i wanted to build things people could actually use. websites. apps. real stuff.

someone i looked up to told me: web is easier to enter than apps, especially without a strong machine. he was right.

the part where i had no idea what i was doing

i wasn't following a roadmap. no udemy course. no bootcamp. no mentor. just:

• random youtube tutorials
• trying things
• failing
• repeating
• googling the same error 40 times

somewhere in that mess i started talking to other developers online. twitter mostly. just replying to people. asking dumb questions. getting ignored sometimes. getting answers sometimes.

slowly built connections. then somehow that turned into a community. ~1,800 developers. which still feels fake when i say it out loud.

at that time i didn't even know what "building in public" meant. i was just posting screenshots of things that barely worked. "look i made a login page." 3 likes. "look i made a database." 7 likes. it was stupid but it kept me going.

that community kept me from dropping it. there were days i wanted to quit. many days. but then someone would reply to my post and say "this is cool" and i'd keep going for another week.

now

i'm 15. which feels old and young at the same time.

running a dev agency. which is a fancy way of saying i build apps for people and they pay me.

built multiple ios apps doing $30k+ mrr combined. strand. labnova. purely. built with react native and figma. shipped to real users. actual humans downloading my apps. still weird.

clients across: usa, uk, india, poland, australia.

sometimes i think about how i started. phone editor. broken layouts. no laptop. no plan. and now people pay me to build things. the gap between those two versions of me doesn't make sense. but here we are.

what actually mattered

not talent. i'm not naturally good at this. i still google basic syntax.

not starting early. 13 isn't that early. there are 8 year olds on youtube who code better than me.

not having the "right" setup. i started on a phone. my first laptop was whatever my parents could afford.

just this: i didn't stop after starting.

that's it. that's the whole thing.

i started on a phone. built things that didn't work. learned without structure. took time to even get a laptop. nothing about it was clean. still isn't.

if you're at the beginning

there's no moment where it suddenly makes sense. no clean transition from "beginner" to "builder." no certificate. no graduation. no one tells you "you're ready now."

you just:

• start
• keep going
• stay long enough to get better

that's all this was. that's all it is.

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i write about building apps, running a dev agency, and what i'm figuring out along the way.

x: https://x.com/anshulsoni2010 whatsapp: https://wa.me/917357022722