Building a coding course generator in public #1: The problem with learning to code today

If I had to learn how to code today from scratch, I’m not sure I would learn it properly.

Not because there aren’t enough resources.

But because there are too many shortcuts.

With AI tools everywhere, it’s never been easier to build apps without fully understanding what’s happening under the hood.

And honestly… that’s very tempting!

How I learned to code

My path was much more traditional:

• I started with a bootcamp to learn fundamentals
• Then I built projects to apply what I learned
• Then I gained real-world experience in a company

The first two steps were what got me my first job.

They gave me something more valuable than just code:
intuition, structure, and confidence.

The problem today

Learning to code today often falls into two extremes:

Too theoretical → you get stuck in tutorials
Too shallow → you ship things without understanding them

AI has amplified the second path.

You can now build fast…
but you might hit a wall later when things break, scale, or need to evolve.

My idea

So I decided to build something to explore this problem:

👉 A course generator that teaches coding through:

• hands-on project building
• coding fundamentals
• best practices

Not theory-heavy.
Not AI shortcut-heavy.
But something in between.

Building in public

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing this journey publicly.

The goal is simple:

• experiment
• learn
• share everything along the way

I also plan to open-source the app once it’s ready so anyone can:

• run it locally
• learn from it
• build on top of it

There are no monetization plans or intentions here, this is purely an experiment.

Some interesting statistics

AI is making building software more accessible than ever.

180M+ developers on GitHub with 36M new developers joining yearly.

63% of Vibe Coders are Non-Developers.

Emerging concerns in Vibe Coding highlight that 40% of junior developers admit to deploying AI-generated code they don't fully understand.

Stack Overflow’s 2024 survey finds 82% of developers use online resources as a primary way to learn.

Why this matters (to me)

I believe we’re entering a phase where:

The bottleneck is no longer building…
it’s understanding what you built

And that’s where fundamentals and best practices still matter.

My goal is to help:

• self-taught developers
• AI-assisted builders
• beginners who want to go beyond “vibe coding”

…develop stronger engineering intuition and build more sustainable products.

What’s next

In the next post, I’ll dive into:

• the technical setup
• early architecture decisions
• constraints for keeping this lightweight and accessible

Here is a sneak peek of the home page in the meantime!

Discussion

I’d love to hear your perspective:

• How are you currently learning or improving your coding skills?
• What’s your setup when building with AI tools?
• Would you use something like this? Why or why not?

Data Sources: GitHub Octoverse 2025, Gartner, JetBrains Developer Ecosystem, Course Report, Second Talent Vibe Coding Statistics, McKinsey AI Survey. Report generated with Perplexity on March 18, 2026.