I'm going to say something that might make some people angry.

Most coding courses are a waste of time.

Not all of them. Not in every context. But for people who want to build products—for aspiring founders, indie hackers, and creators who want to ship things—the traditional "learn to code" path is backwards.

Let me explain.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Here's what the typical coding education path looks like:

  1. Choose a language (usually Python or JavaScript)
  2. Learn syntax through tutorials
  3. Build toy projects (todo apps, calculators, weather widgets)
  4. Learn a framework
  5. Build slightly bigger toy projects
  6. Maybe, eventually, attempt something real

This process can take months. Often years. And at the end of it, a surprising number of people still can't build something from scratch.

Why?

Courses optimize for completion, not competence. The metric is "did you finish the lesson?" not "can you solve a real problem?"

Tutorial hell is a real trap. There's always another course to take. Another concept to learn. Another framework that's supposedly essential. The learning never ends—and neither does the building-avoidance.

Toy projects don't transfer. Building a todo app teaches you almost nothing about building a SaaS product. The problems are different. The complexity is different. The stakes are different.

What Courses Teach

Let's be honest about what most coding courses actually cover:

Syntax. How to write a for loop. How to define a function. How to use conditionals. This is memorizable, and—here's the key point—it's now AI-replaceable. You don't need to remember syntax when Claude will write it for you.

Toy examples. "Let's build a counter!" "Let's fetch data from an API!" These are exercises, not education. They teach you how to follow instructions, not how to solve problems.

Linear progression. Courses present learning as a straight line: fundamentals, then intermediate, then advanced. But real building is non-linear. You need a specific thing, you learn that specific thing, you move on.

What Courses Don't Teach

Here's what actually matters for building products:

How to scope a project. What's the minimum you can build to validate an idea? What features are essential versus nice-to-have? Courses don't cover this because it's not about code—it's about judgment.

How to debug when nothing makes sense. Real debugging isn't "fix the syntax error." It's "something is wrong and I don't know what." That's a different skill entirely.

How to ship something ugly but working. Perfectionism kills more projects than lack of skill. Courses encourage you to do things "right," which often means never finishing.

How to learn what you need, when you need it. Just-in-time learning is the superpower. Most courses teach just-in-case learning, which is inefficient and overwhelming.

The Builder's Alternative

Here's what works instead:

Start with something you want to exist. Not a tutorial project. Not an exercise. Something you'd actually use. Something that scratches an itch.

Use AI to get a working first version. Describe what you want. Let Claude or ChatGPT or Cursor write the initial code. Don't worry about understanding every line—yet.

Break it, fix it, understand it. Once you have something working, change it. Add a feature. Move things around. When it breaks—and it will—figure out why. This is how you learn.

Learn concepts in context, not in isolation. When you hit a wall, learn just enough to get past it. "I need to understand how authentication works" is a better learning prompt than "I should complete a course on security."

This approach is messier than a curriculum. It's also faster and more effective.

When Courses Do Make Sense

I said "most courses" are a waste of time. Here's when they're not:

Deep specialization. If you want to do machine learning, security engineering, or systems programming—fields with genuine depth—structured learning makes more sense. These domains have concepts that build on each other and are hard to pick up ad hoc.

Career switching with credential requirements. Some employers still want bootcamp certificates or CS degrees. If your goal is a specific job at a specific type of company, playing by their rules might be necessary.

Structured accountability. Some people genuinely learn better with external structure. Deadlines, cohorts, instructors—if that's what keeps you moving, there's nothing wrong with it.

But for building products? You don't need permission from a curriculum.

The Real Curriculum

If you want to learn to build by building, here's a more honest curriculum:

Week 1: Ship something. Anything. A landing page. A simple tool. A Chrome extension. It doesn't have to be good. It has to be done.

Week 2: Add one feature to what you shipped. Something that required learning something new.

Week 3: Fix what broke when you added that feature. Figure out why it broke.

Repeat forever.

That's it. That's the curriculum. Each cycle teaches you more than a month of tutorials because you're solving real problems with real stakes.

The Sunk Cost Problem

If you've already invested months or years in courses, this post might sting.

Here's the thing: those courses weren't worthless. You learned something. You developed some intuition. That foundation isn't lost.

But if you're using "I should finish this course first" as a reason not to start building, recognize that for what it is: procrastination dressed up as responsibility.

You have permission to stop learning and start building.

The Permission Slip

You don't need to finish the course.

You don't need to feel ready.

You don't need to understand everything.

You need to start building.

The best way to learn to build is to build. Everything else is preparation for something that never happens.

Open a new project. Describe what you want. Let AI help you create it. Ship it.

Then learn what you need to make it better.

That's the course that matters.

Continue Reading

This post is part of a series on the new rules of building in the AI era: