A big mental leap I made early in my programming was starting to view computers as something that could be understood.

If I could give one piece of advice to anyone learning to program: build.

This advice might be most helpful to beginners. But it’s been valuable to me to revisit at different points in my career. In some ways, this post is for me.

Steve Martin once said the secret to success is to “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” How do you get that good as a programmer? The most direct path I know is to build things.