My coding journey

Java

My earliest memory of coding is from 9th grade in 2009, when our computer teacher took us to the A/V room. She said we could do lots of things with code, and then wrote a code to add two numbers. It went something like:

public class Solution {
    public static int add(int a, int b) {
        return (a + b);
    }
}

She ran the program multiple times and it always gave the correct answer. I distinctly remember myself sitting in one of those A/V room seats, looking up at the projector while my teacher worked her laptop at the podium.

Over the next few years of high school, programming came naturally to me. I was one of the best in my class and built a reputation of a pro. I was often the first to solve problems during our computer practicals. Finding factorials, fibonacci sequences, printing patterns, working with recursion, string manipulation... you name it. I enjoyed writing Java and felt a rush of excitement every time I solved something new. My teacher sent me to inter-school programming contests and I brought home a few trophies and medals.

C++

Even then, I didn’t see programming or computers as a career. I hadn’t really thought it through, and during school, I ended up choosing computers because my brother had taken it. In 2013, while selecting my branch during college admissions, I was having thoughts about mechanical engineering. And that’s what I initially got. Then, by chance, my major got upgraded to computer science because they couldn’t fill all the seats (while submitting branch preferences, I put computers as first and mechanical as second, assuming I wouldn’t get computers based on previous year’s cut-offs. But that year, the cut-off relaxed just enough for me to make it.).

I remember feeling relieved because I met some cool students in computers and wanted to be with them. Plus, I happened to like coding. It felt like magic. I wanted to write more code.

We learned C++ in our courses, and I enjoyed advanced data structures and algorithms. I soon got into competitive programming. Joining contests, solving problems, and participating in team events with a couple of friends, which was a lot of fun.

Python

Two years into college, during a random metro ride home, I ran into a senior who told me about a web development course he took at a nearby coaching center. Around the same time my brother got into the Google Summer of Code (GSOC) ’15. I had been mostly focused on competitive coding so far, and wanted to explore development. So I enrolled.

The course was about web development using Django. For the first time I saw how we can build complex, full stack web apps with code. Learning Python and Django was exciting.

Before my 3rd year started, I signed up for a summer interview preparation course at the same coaching center. Unfortunately, I caught chicken pox and had to skip most of it. Stuck in my room with nothing much to do, I started a new Django project project just for fun. Over time the idea evolved into a Stack Overflow like Q&A app for students preparing for IIT-JEE exams in India.

At the launch, I worked a lot to promote it, and it blew up. Students all over India were using it to ask questions. My brother and I kept building features, and it was great to see people actually use something we had created (some blog posts about its launch and journey).

That project gave me a taste of what it feels like to build something and watch people use it. I began enjoying building apps and scripts, and ended up building many more during the rest of my time in college.

Industry

In 2017, I joined Amazon as a full time engineer. I’d already had a small taste of big-company coding the year before during my internship there, and it was an eye-opener to see how different coding at work was. I was back to writing Java.

Over time my responsibilities shifted to writing less code and doing more leadership stuff. At Amazon my coding style matured and I developed a strong habit of writing well-structure code, even in side projects.

AI

Fast forward to early 2025, I was starting to miss working my side projects and the thrill of launching them. Now with AI, writing code is faster than ever. I sat down, built a few tiny projects and launched them. It felt nice. It took efforts to find the energy and motivation to get them out.

These are interesting times. Writing code and building apps is no longer the same it used to be. Soon, ‘code generator systems’ will do most of the work, and people won’t need to touch code at all. I am still making sense of it all and what the future looks like. One thing’s for sure is that things are changing faster than ever, and I want to be at the forefront. It’s an interesting time to be a builder and a seller.